


free fall away

by ratbandaid



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Divine Pulse (Fire Emblem), During Canon, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Post-Time Skip, Resurrection, Temporary Character Death, kinda??, screwy time physics tm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:19:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23163136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ratbandaid/pseuds/ratbandaid
Summary: Sylvain frowns but nods. “I want to go back. I have to bring Felix back. Even if I…” His words get caught up in his throat, but he forces himself to spit them out. “Even if I have to forget him.”-----After an encounter with death and a faulty use of Sothis's Divine Pulse, Sylvain loses all his memories of Felix, the man that he's loved for years.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 32
Kudos: 198
Collections: Sylvix Squad Super Stories





	1. there's love, and there's love lost

**Author's Note:**

> hey there! i know i'm already in the middle of a wip, but i couldn't help myself from starting something new haha ^^;; i just wanted to write something kind of angsty based on song lyrics + a premise from a prompt generator: "making a deal for someone's life at the cost of all their memories together"
> 
> i bully these two a lot, but that's just because i'm not good at writing fluff tbh -w-;; anyway! i hope you enjoy!

When Sylvain thought about life after death, he always imagined it to unbearably hot, flames mercilessly incinerating your rotting body. He always imagined that you would be enveloped by hellfire, your bones charring and turning to dust as your skin melted away—and afterwards, when nothing of you is left, you could be reborn, rising from your sins and your ashes as a new person completely, like the story of the mythical phoenix he read about as a child. It was a little morbid, idealistic, and even cheesy, but it was what he always thought growing up.

Yet, it turns out that death is much colder than he thought it would be. And darker too.

He isn’t quite sure where he is, but all he knows is that he’s really cold—even colder than standing outside with no clothes on during the snowstorms of frigid Faerghus winters—and that he probably isn’t alive. After all, he remembers his death quite vividly.

He and the other Blue Lions had been wrapping up a rough battle against a few stubborn bandits. As his other classmates charged ahead towards the enemy commander, Sylvain had hung back a little, exhausted and wounded. His gaze had drifted over to Felix, who seemed to be fighting a few bandits off at once. He watched as Felix’s form started to wilt, his swings becoming sloppier and his footing becoming clumsier. However, Felix managed to defeat to bandits in front of him and was leaning against his sword, the blade stabbed in the ground. Felix took a moment to get his breath back, his battered body heaving with each breath he took.

Sylvain was riding over to Felix to check on him when an arrow had flown through the air and struck Sylvain in the chest. He had been knocked off his startled horse, and he started to choke on the blood quickly rising to his mouth from his burning chest. He forced his shaky arms to support his body, sitting upright in the dirt and looking up.

Then, he had spotted an archer taking aim at Felix—most likely the same archer that had shot him. Sylvain’s eyes went wide, and even though he was literally starting to bleed out from the arrow wound, he staggered to his feet and limped as fast as he could towards Felix, trying not to jostle his wound as he moved.

“Felix!” Sylvain shouted, raising his javelin in the air and pointing at the archer. Felix looked over at him, and a look of pure shock had flashed on his face as he took a step towards Sylvain. Sylvain threw the javelin with all his might at the archer and collapsed against the ground with a wheeze.

But it was too late. The archer had fired the arrow.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion. The arrow arced through the air as the javelin fell just short of the archer. Felix turned his head to see the archer. The arrow sunk into his skull. Felix staggered and fell back onto the ground. He went still.

Sylvain had felt a numbness envelop his body, though he couldn’t tell if that was because he was literally dying or because he just watched his best friend—and the love of his life—die before him.

The last thing he had seen was Felix’s still, bloodied body lying in the mud. The last thing he had said was Felix’s name, a whisper of despair. The last thing he heard was Ingrid screaming out his and Felix’s names before the world went dark.

And now here he was, sitting in complete darkness and silence. He wants to shiver from the cold permeating his skin, caressing his bones, but strangely enough, while his body is cold, he feels no need to warm himself. It’s almost as if he recognizes that he’s cold but feels nothing at all. It’s a chilling thought.

“My, my,” a female voice muses, echoing through the odd ambiance of the darkness. It isn’t a voice he recognizes. Sylvain looks around, but he doesn’t see anything nor anyone. “You are very dedicated to keeping your word now, aren’t you?”

A hundred questions race through Sylvain’s mind, ranging from _who are you?_ to _where am I?_ to _why is it so damn cold in here?_ Yet, none of his thoughts reach his lips, and he simply sits in the darkness, dumbfounded.

“Promising to die together with your best friend when you were children and actually going through with it,” the voice continues, growing louder as if the speaker is coming towards him. “It is almost admirable—poetic, to a degree—to have that much determination.”

 _So I_ am _dead_ , Sylvain thinks. Well, he kind of knew that already, but it’s nice to have some sort of official closure. He doesn’t know what to feel. He’s just a little numb.

“Your deaths were untimely. It is most unfortunate, but it seems that this is the reality of war.” The voice is quieter, but he suddenly feels a presence in front of him—something warm and unfixed, like a floating ball of warmth. Startled, Sylvain tries to scramble backwards.

And it works. He manages to move somehow, and the warmth in front of him diminishes slightly.

“Simmer down. I mean you no harm.” The presence approaches him again, the warmth returning. The voice clicks her tongue. “Honestly now. You would think that the dead would have less fear. What could I possibly do to you? You have already died.”

“Who are you?” Sylvain asks, and once he’s done so, it’s as if he’d opened the floodgates blocking the path from his brain to his mouth. “Where am I? Where’s Felix?” He shudders a little. “What’s going to happen to me?”

“One question at a time, child.”

“Who are you?” he repeats.

“I suppose that you ought to know. After all, I cannot imagine that this darkness brings you any comfort.” There’s a burst of blinding light, cutting through the darkness. Sylvain instinctively clenches his eyes shut, his arms raised to block the light. A bit of warmth spreads alongside the light, and when the light subsides into something more bearable, Sylvain finds himself staring at a short, pointy-eared woman with long, green hair and some rather odd clothes, standing barefoot before him.

“I am Sothis,” she tells him calmly. “I am also known as The Beginning.”

 _‘The Beginning,’ huh?_ Sylvain cocks his head at her. _Sounds really important._

She doesn’t acknowledge his confusion regarding her name. She continues, “It is truly quite unfortunate that you and your friend have fallen. You were so young—like many of the others who have fallen in this thoughtless war.” Her gaze turns sad. “But I am afraid that there is little I can do for you.”

“Where’s Felix? If he’s dead too, shouldn’t he be here?”

“Yes. He is here.” Sylvain looks around, but when he sees nothing but the odd, new scenery around him and Sothis—the odd stone throne and the stairs leading up to it—he raises an eyebrow. “He is here,” she repeats, “in a sense. You just cannot see him.”

“Why not?”

Sothis wrinkles her nose. “Well, if all dead souls were taken to the same place, I cannot imagine what kind of chaos would ensue. It would be rather noisy, crowded, and I would hate to have to try and babysit all of you lost souls.” She gives a small huff. “It is hard enough trying to get some sleep around here with all the questions I get.”

Sylvain sighs. “I guess that makes sense.”

A silence fills the space between him and Sothis.

“What’s going to happen to me?” he asks. “And Felix?”

Sothis crosses her arms. “Well, that is where you differ from the others who have come here.” She points at him with one hand, the other resting on her hip. “I have been told not to let you pass through to the afterlife.”

Sylvain frowns. “Me specifically? Did I do something wrong?” He tries to think back to any time where he could have seriously offended any deity. He supposes that his reckless flirting and heartbreaking isn’t exactly the best thing to have on his record, and he knows that killing people in a war isn’t particularly a good thing either.

“No.” She pauses and gives him a flat look. “Well…” She shakes her head. “No. I have not the time for such pettiness.” Sothis steps towards the stone throne. “I have been told not to let you through,” she says slowly, “because I have received a very desperate request to turn back the hands of time and bring both you and Felix back to the land of the living.”

Sylvain furrows his eyebrows. “What?”

“It is convoluted.” She turns to face him. “Tell me, Sylvain. Would you like to go back in time? You would hold no account of this encounter; nor would you remember that you or Felix have ever died.”

Sylvain actually has to think about it for a second, but when he thinks about his life with his classmates, who never fail to make him smile and feel loved for once in his life, and when he thinks about Felix, who may not recognize that Sylvain holds such feelings for him but still treats him with his own version of kindness and love, he knows the answer immediately.

“Yes. I want to go back.”

“Even if it cost you?”

“What would it cost?”

Sothis sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. “In short, while I am able to turn back time regularly—I have done so many times, and you are none the wiser—I find that I am unable to do so now. At least, I cannot do so as I typically would.”

Sylvain feels a sinking feeling in his stomach, like his heart is plummeting to the deepest depths of his body. “So I can’t go back,” he says quietly.

“No. I am able to send you back. However, it seems that if I do, you will face some unexpected consequences.”

“What are they? Do you know?”

Sothis takes in a small breath, a small inhale and a sigh. “It appears that if I were to send you back, you would not retain any memories of Felix.”

Sylvain goes still. His first instinct is to refuse. He doesn’t want to lose his memories of Felix—of them growing up together as friends, of them attending Garreg Mach together as classmates, of them growing closer as allies through the war. Felix has made up such a massive part of his childhood and his life, has helped to shape how he thinks and how he feels. If he loses his memories of Felix, he would lose his feelings for him too. Sylvain doesn’t think he wants to live in a world where he doesn’t know Felix, doesn’t have him to depend on, doesn’t have him to love. It would be such a bleak and boring world, similar to how his life was with Miklan and his father—before Felix came and gave him things to look forward to.

But it’s likely that Sothis would not just send him back in time. She would have to send Felix back too, which makes things a lot more difficult. Sylvain wouldn’t want Felix to die in some obscure field to bandits, and he wouldn’t want Felix to have to be trapped in this cold darkness for all of eternity. If Sylvain has to lose his memories of Felix—all of the happiest and softest memories he’s ever had in his life—just to make sure that Felix doesn’t die and suffer through a painful and pitiful death, wasting away in the afterlife because of Sylvain’s inability to protect him from that damned archer, then Sylvain thinks that the answer is quite obvious.

Sylvain frowns but nods. “I want to go back. I have to bring Felix back. Even if I…” His words get caught up in his throat, but he forces himself to spit them out. “Even if I have to forget him.”

Sothis nods solemnly and holds out her hands. A round, yellow sigil flashes brightly before Sothis, and as the words and symbols of the sigil begin to dance in the air, Sothis locks eyes with Sylvain.

“I cannot turn back the hands of time too far, but I have faith that you and Felix should be able to survive this time around. Even so, I implore you to exercise caution as I will not be able to do this again.” Then, she sighs. “What a troublesome professor.”

 _Professor?_ Sylvain opens his mouth to ask Sothis what she means, but the sigil flashes again and the world around him grows dark once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a real hot mess since I don't really know how Sylvain would react to Sothis, especially in such a somber situation. I promise that I (sort of) have an explanation as to why this is all happening though so stick around and find out! c:
> 
> Also yes, I based Sylvain's perception of the afterlife after his crit quote, "Burn until we meet again." :^)


	2. won't judge you (out of sight, out of mind)

It’s a warm morning when Felix comes to consciousness. His head is throbbing, and his body aches like it never has before. When he looks down, he finds that he’s lying on a bed in the infirmary and that much of his sore body is wrapped in clean, white bandages and dark bruises.

“Oh! You’re awake,” comes a soft voice from the doorway. He looks over and sees Mercedes there, holding a tray of food. She smiles as she walks over. “The others will be very glad to hear this. We were all very worried about you, Felix.” Mercedes sets the tray down on the stand beside the bed and picks up the glass of water, which Felix takes. “How do you feel?”

Felix quickly downs the glass of water and sets the glass on the tray before looking up at her. “Awful.”

She purses her lips together, though her overall demeanor never shifts from the calm and gentle. “I see. Well, how does it hurt?” Mercedes lifts her hands and lets them hover over Felix’s battered torso. “I’ll need a little more detail.”

A cool wave of healing magic swathes him and dulls the ache. Felix lets out a small sigh of relief, giving Mercedes a small frown when she lowers her hands and the refreshing numbness fades away.

"What happened to me?” he asks. He can hardly remember a thing. All that he remembers is that he was on the battlefield, fighting off bandits.

Mercedes cocks her head, pressing her index finger to the corner of her lips as if in deep thought. “Well, from what Ingrid said, a couple of bandits had targeted you, and you were trying to fight them off on your own.”

 _Sounds like something I’d do_ , Felix thinks to himself. _Must have gotten careless. I need more training._

“But don’t worry,” Mercedes continues, flashing a bright smile at him. “Ingrid said that she managed to make it over just in time to help you out. We’re very lucky that she did that—you were in quite the condition when you came back here.”

 _Looks like I owe Ingrid now. Goddess, just how careless was I?_ Felix gives a small huff through his nostrils, rubbing his temples to soothe the ache and the frustration building up in his head.

“I’ll go ahead and tell everyone that you’re awake now.” She picks up the empty cup and a pitcher of water that was on the tray, refilling the water. “You should really eat though. It’s some yummy two-fish sauté that I made, with some help from Annie! We know that you like that dish just as much as we do.”

Felix admits that he’s quite appreciative for the trouble that Mercedes has gone through to make the meal, but he is quite concerned that Annette had had a hand in making the food. Nevertheless, he trusts Mercedes’s judgment and her cooking skills enough to let himself indulge in the meal. Mercedes leaves the room quietly, and Felix eats, his appetite awakening after the first bite of his delicious meal.

He barely manages to finish his meal and set it aside when Ingrid storms into the room, Dimitri and Dedue quietly following in behind her.

“Felix!” Her expression looks as fierce and disapproving as ever. Felix raises an eyebrow and prepares himself for a lecture.

“It’s nice to see that you’re awake, Felix,” Dimitri manages to say before Ingrid makes it to the bedside.

"How could you be so, so careless? So stupid? We are a _team_ , Felix—and that means that if you find yourself in that kind of situation, you’re _supposed_ to rely on us and call for us to help you.”

“I didn’t need your help,” he snaps back, almost instinctively.

Ingrid gives him a scalding look and gestures at him. “Look at yourself right now! You clearly did!” Ingrid sighs and shakes her head. “Oh, never mind that.” Her expression softens a little. “How are you feeling?”

“Like shit,” Felix responds, sitting up in his bed. “But I think I should be alright. Mercedes didn’t look that worried.” He glances at Ingrid, but his eyes trail behind her—past Dimitri, past Dedue. Disappointment and confusion well up in his chest at the noticeable absence of a certain redhead in the room.

 _Couldn’t he at least pretend that he cares about my wellbeing?_ Felix can’t help the bitterness that seeps into his thoughts. _I mean, I shouldn’t care this much that he’s not here, but I check up on him all the time when he gets hurt like this. You would think that he would be a little worried when his best friend almost dies. Well, allegedly._ Immediately after those thoughts, embarrassment starts to heat up his body. _OK, well, it’s not that important, I guess. But I’ll get on his case about it later._

Ingrid follows his gaze and shares a look with Dimitri. Felix has known the two of them for years, and they’ve never been quite as good at hiding their true emotions as Sylvain had been—he can tell that something is clearly off, especially from the troubled look that they’re giving each other. Even Dedue looks uneasy about this situation.

He might as well address the elephant in the room. “Where’s Sylvain?” he asks, cutting through the silence of the room.

There’s a pause before Ingrid replies with a harsh, “Probably off flirting with some poor girl, like he always is.” Felix narrows his eyes at her. “What?” she asks, crossing her arms.

He turns his gaze to Dimitri.

“I do not know where he is, Felix,” Dimitri replies, squaring his shoulders. He looks uncomfortable, and even though the boar has grown up and shown his true colors, his expression is remnant of the days at the monastery, when he wore that earnest, naïve persona. “As Ingrid said, it is likely that he is doing what he normally does.”

“Don’t lie to me, boar.” Felix throws the covers off himself with a huff and moves his legs over to the side of the bed. Ingrid backs up a little but holds her hands out, as if to stop him. “You two know something that I don’t. Stop lying to me and just spit it out already.”

A spark of dread ignites in his chest. Had something terrible happened to Sylvain? While Felix had been out cold, had he gotten himself killed? Perhaps during the battle? Felix wouldn’t have been able to see where Sylvain was since he was too occupied on the enemies surrounding him, and he had blacked out right before he managed to take out the last enemy. It’s possible that right as Felix blacked out, Sylvain could have tried to do something stupid and tried to come in and rescue him, only to get himself killed—or, maybe Felix is being too hopeful and stupidly romantic, thinking that Sylvain would rush in like his knight in blood-stained armor to try and protect him. Either way, Felix can’t help but to feel fear turn his blood into ice, to feel his heart starting to rot and decay.

"Well, the thing is that we don’t really know what happened either.” Ingrid averts her gaze. “He was fine after the battle, but…”

"We believe that he has perhaps been struck over the head,” Dedue chimes in. Felix raises an eyebrow so Dedue continues. “He is behaving in ways that suggest his memory has been lost.”

“OK. And? Is he being treated?” Felix slips out of the bed and swats away Ingrid’s concerned hands. “Is Mercedes working with him too?”

“Mercedes says that nothing’s wrong with him. She’s tried to heal him, but nothing changed.” Dedue speaking up must have encouraged Ingrid to come clean because she keeps speaking. “He says that he has no clue who you are. He says he remembers me, Dimitri, and even Dedue, but he keeps saying, ‘I don’t know anyone named Felix.’”

“I had thought he was playing a joke,” Dimitri offers, “so I asked him to be serious, but he kept insisting that he was being serious.” He gives Felix a sad look, which only frustrates him.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Felix snaps. “I don’t want your pity.”

It just isn’t right. Felix has no idea what to make of the information that he’s been told.

How could Sylvain forget about him? If he had been struck on the head hard enough to develop some sort of amnesia, as Dedue had theorized, then Sylvain shouldn’t have forgotten just Felix. He would have also lost his memories of Ingrid and Dimitri, since they were also around during Sylvain and Felix’s childhood. And Sylvain can be playful and try to play a prank, like Dimitri had initially thought he was doing, but Sylvain isn’t the type of person to carry out a bit for that long, especially in such dire and real circumstances. So what is going on? Did Sylvain truly forget about who he is? Is Sylvain messing around? Or is Sylvain somehow serious about this all?

It just doesn’t make sense. And Felix refuses to believe that this is true until he sees it with his own two eyes. He refuses to think that he’s lost his best friend—or, rather, that his best friend has lost _him_.

 _After all those years you’ve made me suffer beside you, you insufferable prick,_ Felix swears at him in his head, _you’re going to really go around and tell people you have no idea who I am? Unbelievable. Knock it off, Sylvain, and tell me you’re worried about me. At least a little._

Despite how his body aches all over, Felix starts to storm out of the room, pushing past the other Blue Lions in the room, but just as he nears the door, Mercedes steps in. She blinks owlishly at him.

“Felix? What are you doing up? You should really be getting some more rest.” She sets her hands on Felix’s shoulders. “Here, let’s get you back in bed.”

Felix wrenches himself away. “I need to go talk to Sylvain.”

Mercedes stands in front of the door, blocking him in. “Oh, Felix,” she says softly, her expression sad. “I can ask him to come here, but I think it’d be best for you to stay in bed first.” Her gaze floats over to the other Blue Lions in the room. “You’re still recovering and…”

“He knows.” Ingrid appears to answer Mercedes’s unspoken question. “We told him about it. That’s why he wants to see him.”

“I see.” Mercedes shakes her head and steers Felix towards the bed. Felix struggles initially, but he eventually gives in and lets her do her job. Felix climbs back into bed and crosses his arms as best as he can over his battered body.

“I’ll bring him in,” she tells him, “but you have to stay here, in bed.” She frowns at him. “You said it yourself—you still don’t feel very well. That’s why you should let your body rest and recover.”

Felix waves her off. “OK, fine.”

The wait for Mercedes to return with Sylvain is unbearably long. It doesn’t help that a silent tension wraps around everyone in the room. Ingrid stares down at the ground, her eyebrows furrowed; Dimitri pointedly looks at anything that isn’t Felix; and Dedue stands beside Dimitri, his eyes shut as if in deep thought. Felix hates this—hates the awkward tension, hates the pity he’s been getting, hates that he doesn’t even really know what’s going on just yet. But he knows that Mercedes should be coming with Sylvain soon and waits.

Eventually, Mercedes knocks on the wood of the door and peeks her head through the door. She smiles a little and steps in. To Felix’s surprise, the Professor follows in behind Mercedes and Sylvain. The Professor nods at Felix in acknowledgment. Felix keeps his gaze glued on Sylvain, who just stares back at him.

“Well?” he finally huffs. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

Sylvain rests a hand on the back of his neck. “Uh, well, that all looks pretty bad,” he says slowly. “So get well soon.”

To anyone, Sylvain may sound like he’s talking to Felix the same way he talks to anyone else, but to Felix, Sylvain’s voice is strangely stiff and polite, distant and wary. It’s lower and softer, and his confused gaze only adds to the feeling of _distance_ between him and Felix. Felix hasn’t heard this kind of tone from Sylvain used towards him in—in literal years. It’s the same one he uses when he speaks to nobles he doesn’t quite know or when he talks to people knowing that he’s supposed to be somewhat mannerly—assuming that they’re not people whose hearts he’s trying to win over with his honeyed tones, meaningless flattery, and sultry smiles.

It’s the kind of tone that Sylvain tends to use to people like his own parents—all sternness and almost none of that addictive personality of his.

Felix heaves a sigh. “Cut it out, Sylvain. This joke isn’t funny.” He glares at him. “You can fool Ingrid; you can fool Dedue and Mercedes; and hell, you can even fool the boar, but you can’t fool me.”

The corner of Sylvain’s lip twitches, but otherwise, his gaze remains the same. “Boar?” he echoes.

“Felix, we’re telling you. He isn’t playing some kind of joke. He’s serious,” Ingrid says, pointedly ignoring Sylvain’s amusement. She steps up beside Sylvain and places a hand on his shoulder. “He doesn’t remember you.”

“No. I don’t believe that.” Felix feels a little embarrassed that he’s acting like such a stubborn, petulant child in front of so many, but he refuses to believe that Sylvain isn’t playing some kind of elaborate joke. “I need proof.”

“Like what?” asks Ingrid, clearly exasperated.

“I don’t know—something better than him just standing here and looking like a fool.”

“Now, now.” Mercedes steps up to Felix’s bed. “Let’s not call each other names.” She turns to the Professor. “I believe that the Professor has something to say now. She’s been waiting for you to wake up before she looked into this.”

All eyes in the room shift to Professor Byleth, who comes forward. She turns to Sylvain. “Sylvain,” she says slowly, “this is Felix. He is a classmate and a member of the Blue Lions, but first and foremost, he is someone that you should know. He is a very close friend of yours.”

Felix’s heart sinks to the bottom of his stomach, but he can’t manage to force any words out, simply too flabbergasted that _this is seriously happening. She believes him too._

Sylvain flicks his gaze back to Felix, his golden gaze locking onto Felix’s own amber eyes. He doesn’t say anything, instead simply cocking his head. Felix furrows his brows.

After a click of his tongue, Felix manages to choke some words out, trying to pretend that his life isn’t slowly falling apart. “Come _on_. Professor, you can’t possibly be serious.” He points at Sylvain and stares at the Professor. “There’s no way in hell that you _actually_ believe him saying that he forgot about me. That’s impossible. You can’t just lose all your memories of one person. That’s not how the brain works!”

Professor Byleth furrows her brows but says nothing in response to Felix’s indignation. She takes a step back and nods at Sylvain. “Sylvain, I expect you to get along with Felix.” Before she leaves, she simply states, “I will be in my room if you need me.”

Sylvain beams at her, and Felix feels something terrible welling up in the pits of his being—something hot and angry but at the same time, cold and sad. Felix knows that smile. He knows it like the back of his hand, though he thoroughly wishes that he never knew what it meant at all. “Anything for a beautiful lady,” Sylvain calls after the Professor, confirming Felix’s suspicions.

It’s that same smile he wears when he’s playing as that playboy persona of his.

 _After all that work I’ve done to stomp that disgusting, awful, despicable persona out_ , Felix thinks, and he swears that he can feel his eye twitching, _after all I’ve done to get him to stop looking at girls like that and pay more attention to himself and me and all his other friends…_

It’s been literal years of work. Felix has been whittling away at Sylvain’s terrible flirting tendencies and the seemingly endless trauma behind it—the way that Sylvain just wanted to feel _loved_ and _wanted_ by anyone, the way that Sylvain thought he could prove his self-worth by attracting potential female heirs to the Gautier name, the way that he could hide away any insecurities and make it seem that he’s doing just fine to any onlookers. Felix has been working day and night to show him that he doesn’t _need_ any of those random girls. He just needs Felix—and his other friends, of course, but who’s the one who’s always been there for Sylvain? Who’s the one who understands him best? Who’s the one that loves him the most?

OK, well, Felix still isn’t sure about that last one. Even just thinking about calling his complicated feelings for Sylvain as _love_ makes him feel weird. His palms get sweaty, and his face gets red, and he can’t bear to even look in Sylvain’s general direction because he knows he’ll stare for longer than necessary and stutter if Sylvain asks if he’s alright and—

 _Now’s not the time for that_ , Felix scolds himself. But even if he tries to retain his composure, staring at Sylvain, as clueless as a newborn, he can’t help but to feel that he’s failed Sylvain somehow. He let Sylvain slip back into that terrible habit; he let Sylvain get hurt and forget him; he doesn’t know how to help Sylvain. Something’s hurting in his heart, and Felix barely even thinks before he tries to mask that pain in the only way that he knows how.

“You.” Sylvain turns his head to acknowledge Felix. “Get the fuck out of this room,” he says, voice low and raspy. He reminds himself of a cornered cat, hackles raised and hissing, but he knows he can’t pull himself out of bed without Mercedes or Ingrid pushing him back.

Sylvain blinks. “Whoa. Um, didn’t you just hear the Professor?”

“Get out!” Felix reaches behind him, grabs one of the pillows propping him up, and chucks it directly at Sylvain, who gets bopped right in the face with it. Sylvain picks up the pillow and scowls.

“Geez, what’s wrong with you? I didn’t even do anything!” Sylvain tosses the pillow back onto the bed, though his throw is much gentler and isn’t aimed at Felix is particular. The pillow plops gently on Felix’s legs. “If I’m your friend, why do you treat me like I’ve committed some terrible crime?”

“He kind of treats all of us like that,” Ingrid mutters under her breath, and Sylvain—Felix can see the gears turning in his head—seems to take it as a truth, rather than the verbal jab at Felix that it was meant to be.

“I see.” Sylvain takes a step back. “Well, then, I guess I’ll be going.” Sylvain gives a half-hearted wave and leaves the room.

“Felix, what the hell was that all about?” Ingrid asks, stepping forward with a cross look. She picks up the pillow, fluffs it twice, and moves to set it behind Felix, who swats at her.

“Stop mothering me.”

“You’re the one who asked us to bring him here, even though we told you that it probably wasn’t a good idea,” Ingrid scolds, ignoring him. She sets the pillow back, pushes Felix back into the pillow a little, and crosses her arms. “Talk.”

“Leave me alone. All of you.” Felix sinks in bed, as if his heavy heart is pulling him down. “I’m tired.” He shuts his eyes. “I want to be alone.”

“That’s all you’re going to say?” Ingrid glares at him—Felix can _feel_ her gaze burning into him.

“Alright, Ingrid,” Mercedes placates, “perhaps it’s best to leave him be. Maybe he’ll want to talk about this later. After all, this is quite a lot of information that he’s had to take in in such a short amount of time—immediately after he woke up from a life-threatening injury too.”

 _‘Talk about this later,’ huh? Fat chance_ , Felix thinks. He ignores the promise that Ingrid and Dimitri will be back and half-heartedly listens to Mercedes telling him that she’ll be right around the corner if he needs her.

Instead, he clenches his eyes shut and tries not to feel like he’s lost someone dear to himself for the third time in his life.

-

As Byleth walks to her room, she hears a familiar voice, like a whisper on the wind.

 _"I told you that it wasn’t a good idea,_ ” comes the voice, nagging at her. It’s soft at first, but as Byleth strains her ears and concentrates on the voice, it seems to get louder. Byleth clings to the voice, though she knows that there’s no chance of the voice’s owner actually appearing beside her. _“It would have been best to let nature take its course and respect the boundaries of the Divine Pulse.”_

There is a touch of gentleness to her voice now. Byleth can practically see Sothis’s pouty expression easing into one of understanding.

Byleth steps into her room and shuts the door. “Sothis, please. Not this again. Not now.” She gives a small sigh. “This is hard on all of us, you know.”

 _“Petulant child! After all I’ve done for you!”_ Sothis huffs.

There isn’t much that Byleth can say. So she says, “Thank you.”

Sothis bites back an indignant huff and instead gives a hearty sigh, one that seems to last a full three seconds at least. _“They do not seem well,”_ she says evenly. _“Especially that Fraldarius heir.”_

Byleth shakes her head. “I have faith in them. They have always been perseverant. Clever. Strong. They will find a way.”

_“And yet, I cannot help but have my doubts. This all could have been avoided had I granted you one more Divine Pulse before that battle.”_

"You did what you could.”

 _“I did what I could, huh?”_ muses the goddess. _“How odd that it is_ you _who is consoling_ me _. Even if you say that, i_ _t does not feel as such. If only there was something else I could have done…”_ Her voice fades, growing quieter and quieter until Byleth can no longer hear her. Byleth shuts her eyes, sorely missing her friend.

-

It had been an unusually difficult battle. She had to turn back the hands of time quite frequently, just to ensure that everyone stayed alive. The bandits seemed well-prepared for the battle and were quite strong and skilled. They saw through her strategies and managed to always pick off her students, particularly the ones who had a weaker defense like Ashe or Annette. She refused to lose any of her students here, especially when this was simply an auxiliary battle for them all.

She remembers running up to the enemy commander and dealing the finishing blow when she hears Ingrid screaming at the top of her lungs, when she sees Annette bury her face in Mercedes’s side, when she sees Dimitri whipping around with shock in his expression. When she turned to see what everyone was staring at, she saw Felix and Sylvain lying on the ground, still and marked by a fatal amount of blood loss.

She had no idea what to do. She had used up the very last of her Divine Pulse, expecting that she would be able to wipe out the commander and finish the battle. She hadn’t known that there were still bandits left.

She tried to use a Divine Pulse, tried her damned hardest, but she simply couldn’t. Panic welled up in her body, and she crumpled to the ground, staring blankly at the ground as shock overwhelmed her. She wanted to cry. But she just felt numb.

 _I let this happen,_ she thought. _I was careless. They died because of me._

Meanwhile, her other students were sent into a panic. Mercedes was clinging to Ingrid on her Pegasus and trying to fly over to bring back Sylvain and Felix, though her grim expression revealed her expectations. Annette was covering her face and crying with Ashe trying to comfort her, despite his own teary eyes. Dimitri was making his way over to Sylvain and Felix, throwing aside his lance. Dedue, with his own tired and sorrowful gaze, had opted to stay with Annette and Ashe, letting them seek comfort in his arms.

“What do we do, Professor?” Annette had wailed. “This can’t be happening! We have to do something!”

“Felix, Sylvain!” Byleth heard Ingrid shout. “Get up! This isn’t funny! Get up already and show us you’re fine!”

“Ingrid, please,” came Mercedes’s tired reply. “Please, simmer down. I cannot concentrate with you shouting like that…”

Byleth shut her eyes, shut out all the chaotic noise. She reached deep inside her heart and sought out the Divine Pulse. She waited for the distorted colors and the shattering noise, for the dizzying pull of time and the lives of her two students.

Yet nothing came.

Nothing but an eerie silence and a cold room. Byleth looked around and found herself in the room where she had first met Sothis, the room with her throne. The only difference was that Sothis was not sitting up there upon the throne.

It was off-putting, at the very least, to be where Sothis always used to be but no longer was.

“You’ve used up all your Divine Pulses.” Sothis’s voice seemed to come out of nowhere and from within Byleth. It seemed to wrap around Byleth, like a soft hug. Her tone was the same one that she had used when she watched Jeralt fall and tried to console Byleth—all quiet understanding and sorrow. “You cannot turn back time anymore.”

Byleth shook her head fervently. “You have to help me, Sothis. Please! _Please!_ Don’t let them fall here because of my carelessness.” Byleth spoke aloud but clasped her hands together as if in prayer. “Please. Just one more Divine Pulse. I promise I won’t ever do anything stupid like this again.”

“I cannot give you what I do not have,” Sothis replied evenly.

“Sothis, please!” Byleth felt desperate tears prick her eyes. “Please. I’ll do anything. Anything!”

Sothis clicked her tongue. “Have you no shame? Do not grovel at me! I told you: I am unable to give you what I myself do not have! If you cannot turn back the hands of time once again, then it is likely that I cannot either!”

Byleth went silent. What was that she had just said?

“Byleth?” Sothis prompted.

“Likely. You said likely.”

Sothis went silent too.

“Bring them back.”

“Byleth.”

“ _Now_ , Sothis.”

With that, Sothis began to speak quickly, as if having been caught in a lie. “It… It is not that I do not want to,” Sothis defended. “I understand your grief, and I understand theirs quite well. I, too, feel for them. I would love to simply grant you one last Divine Pulse and bring them back normally. However, I do not completely understand what will happen if I do. You have used the very last of your Divine Pulses—the very last of which should behave normally.”

Byleth scowled. “Do I look like I care? I won’t be the reason that Felix and Sylvain die. I won’t allow it!”

Sothis scoffed at her. “You pettish fool! You imprudent brat! Are you listening to me? Are you even listening to _yourself_?! It is no wonder that they died—you behave so childishly and so selfishly that you fail to see reason!”

Byleth winced at the jab but shot back with, “That’s why you should help me bring them back, instead of lying to me about this! I need to make it up to them!”

Sothis gave a frustrated growl. “Have you cotton in your ears?” She huffed. “Ugh, metaphorically speaking. I _know_ you are not using your ears to hear me.” She huffed again and continued, “How can one be so imbecilic?”

"OK, OK. Fine. I'm stupid. You can insult me all you want later. After you bring them back.” Byleth shut her eyes tightly. “Please, Sothis.”

Sothis didn’t speak for a bit. Byleth took this moment to take a few deep breaths, to calm herself down. But Sothis didn’t speak.

"Sothis?” Byleth paused. “I’m sorry. I… I lost my temper. I was being…” She sought out a word—and as if Sothis had shoved it at her, she thought of one. “Unruly.”

Sothis sighed. “Don’t you know I want what is best for you and those children?” Sothis asked exasperatedly. Tiredly. “I have watched them learn and grow, just as you did. I understand the grief. I understand the despair. I, myself, have been there.”

“Sothis—”

"But would I lie to you for no reason? Would I lie to keep these children dead for no apparent reason?” Sothis pleaded. “Please, do understand me.”

“What are you saying?” Byleth asked slowly.

“I am saying that I refused to turn back the hands of time because I have a good idea of what may happen.”

“Which is?”

Sothis gave another soft sigh. “I bring them back,” she stated slowly, “but one—or maybe even both of them—may have no recollection of the other.”

“What?” Byleth blinks. “No recollection? How can that be?”

Sothis hummed noncommittally. “Now, understand this, Byleth. I know not what will happen with all certainty. However, I do know that their fates are deeply intertwined throughout all of time. So deeply intertwined, in fact, that if I try to bring them back against time’s wishes, something bad may happen to their memories together.”

Sothis took Byleth’s confusion as a chance to clarify and continued with, “I do not understand why it is this way. Time is a fickle thing, always evading our understanding despite its linearity and constancy. All I know is that if I try to bring them back without the Divine Pulse, something will happen—to one or both of them.

“It is not something I am well-versed in. After all, I have never, ever had to do this. In fact, I had not known it was an option until after… After Jeralt.”

“You… You could have brought him back?”

“At the cost of you or him losing all recollection of each other, there was a _slight_ chance.”

Byleth focused her gaze on the ground and thought of her father. She thought of all the memories of Jeralt smiling at her, checking up on her after battles, holding her and loving her. She thought of all the memories where Jeralt cut her hair and she laughed because of how terrible it looked and how guilty Jeralt looked; where Jeralt hummed little songs and combed his rough fingers through her hair when he thought she was asleep; where she and Jeralt would look up at the night sky, at the stars where Jeralt claimed her mother was, and reminisce on their family. All these memories filled her heart with such warmth and fondness—to think that she could have had the chance to lose them, or to think that Jeralt would have viewed her as a stranger simply tore her heart in two.

And finally she said, “I wouldn’t have wanted that.” Her voice was small, and she knew she sounded childish. “I… I want him to know me. And I want to know him.”

“So perhaps it was for the best for you two.”

“But Sylvain and Felix…” Byleth started.

“May not feel the same,” Sothis finished for her.

Byleth gulped. “Then would it be possible for you to ask them how they feel about this? And if they agree, would you be able to bring them back?”

“Yes. I could indeed ask them. And if they both agree, I could bring them back.”

“Sothis, will you _please_ consider this then?”

And as Byleth was being forced straight back into the battlefield, where Mercedes was still tirelessly working on healing Felix and Sylvain despite the fact that they were dead, she heard Sothis’s soft, “Yes. I will consider this.”

-

Sothis had asked Felix and Sylvain if they would both be willing to come back, if the other lost their memory of them, and both had agreed. She brought them back, though she hadn’t known that only Sylvain would lose his memory.

Byleth thinks that this is for the better. If at least one of them remembers, then there’s a chance that the other can help to rebuild what was lost.

But because of this, Sothis has been seeming more tired and more absent. While Byleth could typically feel Sothis with her, now her presence seems fainter than ever before. Sometimes, if Sothis is trying to convey something to her, her messages may fade away halfway through. Sometimes, if Byleth is trying to convey something to Sothis, Sothis may not respond at all.

To top it all off, Felix seems rather cold towards Sylvain now. She had left the room, but Sylvain had asked her if he was really friends with Felix.

“I mean, he seems really mean. He threw a pillow at me and told me to get out of his room—I didn’t even do anything, Professor!” Sylvain had complained over lunch with her. “I mean, I get that some people just don’t like me, but you said this guy was a very close friend.”

“Because he is,” Byleth had insisted, losing her appetite. “Are you sure you didn’t do anything?”

“Yes, Professor.” Sylvain had smiled at her. “He wasn’t some pretty girl, and I wasn’t flirting with him. Hell, I wasn’t even flirting with Ingrid or Mercedes! I was just standing there.”

Byleth pressed her lips together and furrowed her brows. “I see.”

Now, she can only wonder, _Did I do the right thing? Was making Sothis bring them back really a good idea?_

She always quickly shoots this thought out of her head. Of course it’s a good idea. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she knew that Felix and Sylvain, who trusted her as their mentor and one of their lead strategists, died because of her stupidity. She knows that all of the other Blue Lions would view their deaths as something demoralizing too, especially because they had all grown so close together. They were like a little family.

Yet, she can’t help but to have a feeling of dread bloom in her chest.

 _Please, Felix. Get along with Sylvain,_ Byleth thinks to herself. _Please, Sylvain. Remember Felix._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if any of this makes sense, but I'm trying my best! I just hope that the rest of the story isn't too affected by this weird explanation of events ^^;;


	3. so tired (where can i lay my head?)

After around two painfully long weeks of being coddled by Mercedes and Ingrid with hardly a moment for himself, Felix is finally released from the infirmary.

“Please be gentle to your body,” Mercedes gently tells him, handing him a neatly-folded pile of his clothes and armor—the same kind from the last battle, though any stains have been mercilessly scrubbed clean and any tears have been flawlessly mended. “Remember to stay hydrated, yes? Oh, and I’d prefer if you would only train for at most an hour a day.” She smiles at him. “I do know that you tend to overwork yourself when you train. But please don’t overdo it.”

Felix gives her a curt nod. “Thanks.”

“Shall I walk you to the dining hall? We can eat together, if you’d like.”

“I think I’m going to put my things away and head to the training grounds.”

Mercedes raises an eyebrow.

“Only for an hour.” He most definitely won’t be training for ‘only an hour,’ but if it gets Mercedes to leave him alone, he’ll say it. The past few weeks have made him antsy; he swears that he could _feel_ his muscles slowly deteriorating as he was forced to lie dormant, to let his body heal. He’s lost too much time that could have been used for perfecting his skills, skills that will help to save his life and the lives of those he cares about one day.

Whether she believes him or not, Mercedes smiles at him. “I’ll see you around. If you need me, don’t hesitate to call, Felix. I’ll be there!”

Felix gives her another short nod and leaves Mercedes, who cleans up the infirmary as she hums. Finally being able to walk around on his own is so freeing. He hates to waste any more time than he already has, but something about walking out of that cramped room feels incredible.

When he gets to his room, he puts his clothes away and changes into something more fit for his training. He leaves his room and starts heading north towards the training grounds. His mind wanders towards Sylvain, as it had done while he was stuck in the infirmary.

After his one and only encounter with Sylvain after he had regained consciousness at the infirmary, he’s reflected on Sylvain’s behaviors. He’s replayed the memory of Sylvain’s visit over and over in his head, analyzing everything he’d said and done and thinking about what he himself had said and done. And though it kills him to admit it, he’s come to the conclusion—and he’s really accepted it this time—that Sylvain’s memory must truly be messed up somehow.

Felix has no idea how this could be. How can Sylvain remember their friends without remembering the tiniest memory of Felix’s existence? How can he recognize Professor Byleth when much of their time at the monastery had been spent together, studying and eating and even being forced to do chores together?

It’s impossibly frustrating, and it truly does feel like he’s lost another person he deeply cares about—like he’s lost a part of himself.

But if there’s one thing that Felix is, it’s stubborn. He’s going to relentlessly bother Sylvain and force him to remember everything about Felix—yes, including even the most embarrassing memories. Felix is sure that he can find a book in the library about handling amnesia, and he can study up on that later, when everyone is asleep and unlikely to bother him.

“Felix?”

Speak of the devil; Sylvain is sitting at a bench, an arm lazily draped along some girl’s shoulder. Felix eyes the girl briefly, looking at her curious expression and the blush still lingering on her cheeks. He vaguely recognizes her as a girl that he sees in the training hall from time to time—another soldier in this wretched war.

“I’d heard you’d be out of the infirmary sometime today.” Sylvain gives him a small, polite smile—a careful look as he assesses Felix’s reaction. “Feeling any better?”

Felix pushes aside any jealousy and frustration and simply gives a small nod. “Much better.” He forces his tone to be a little lighter, a little more open. To be frank, he’s surprised that Sylvain even bothered greeting him, considering that he pelted Sylvain with a pillow and told him to get lost just a few weeks prior. He hadn’t looked too pleased with that. Perhaps the Professor had urged him to give Felix another chance—which, if she did, Felix silently thanks her for making this so much easier. Making the first move in speaking to Sylvain—to anyone, really—is always pretty difficult.

Sylvain seems somewhat satisfied by Felix’s answer. “Where are you headed?”

“Training grounds.”

Sylvain gives an exaggeratedly exasperated sigh, though his good-natured smile stays in place. “Honestly, you’re just like His Highness. There’s more to life than training, you know.” He turns his attention to the girl beside him. “Like spending some nice time with a few beauties.” The girl giggles, clearly delighted with Sylvain’s antics.

Felix rolls his eyes. This is very typical behavior of Sylvain before the Professor had gone missing five years ago. Just how much had Sylvain’s emphasis on his own self-worth regressed? How much had been stolen from him when Felix disappeared from his mind?

“Hey.” Felix finds himself calling out to Sylvain before he knows it. When Sylvain casts his gaze towards Felix, his honey-brown eyes wide with curiosity, Felix feels a lot of the words he wants to say dissolve away on his tongue as a pang of despair and yearning grasp his heart.

“What?”

Felix 0pens his mouth. The words are right there, at the tip of his tongue— _get dinner with me tonight._ But he can’t say it. Instead, he tenses up and shakes his head. He’ll find another way to invite Sylvain to get food at the dining hall with him. Just not like this, when Sylvain has someone clinging to his arm and begging for his attention.

“Never mind. Goodbye.”

As Felix sharply turns away from Sylvain and that girl, he tries to organize his thoughts. Meeting Sylvain like this could have been a lot worse—for starters, he could have gotten into another argument with him and ended up throwing something else at Sylvain’s face. At least this encounter shows that Sylvain is willing to at least talk to him, and it shows that Felix is capable of speaking to him without being too weird.

There’s still a hint of embarrassment that tangles itself around the way that Felix chickened out of trying to get Sylvain to spend more time with him, but it’s not too important. He’ll just train a lot harder than he planned and get his mind off of him.

-

Training after these two weeks of bedrest is hell. It’s not like he’s forgotten everything, but muscle memory can only go so far. His body seems to disobey him. His movements are clumsy and sluggish; his swings feel unbalanced, the sword too heavy in his hands. Callouses, once permanently marring his hands, are starting to form again. He must seem like quite the spectacle, once one of the top swordsmen in the army but now quickly slipping down the ranks.

No, that’s unacceptable. He can’t be so pathetic, so unskilled and _weak_. He knows that he’s better than this. Everyone does. He can’t show them that he’s struggling, that he’s weak.

Perhaps that’s how he ends up training until he can hardly stand. He spars with people who haven’t missed a single day of training, with people who are clearly more skilled than him right now, and he ends up with arms so sore that they feel like they’re going to fall right off, with legs that feel like one of Mercedes’s gelatinous desserts, with a body so sweaty and hot that he feels like he’s running the worst fever of his life. At one point, he can barely lift his arms, nevertheless a sword.

Clearly, his training partners can see his state and call off the training for him, trying to sympathetically tell him that he’ll get better soon— _you’re always fast on your feet, Felix, so you’ll definitely be back where you in no time!_ He doesn’t want to hear their pity, but he lets them guide him into a sitting position on the ground in the back of the training grounds, his back pressed against a wall as he tries to catch his breath.

Dinnertime is soon. His training partners are filing out of the training room, ecstatically talking about what’s on the menu. A few flick their glances back at Felix, but Felix gives them a tired wave of dismissal. They shrug and leave. In just a few minutes, there’s practically no one in the training grounds but him and a few soldiers.

He leans his head against the wall and shuts his eyes. He’s so tired, _so_ tired. He doesn’t even think he wants to eat anything. He doesn’t even want to wash up. He’s so tired that all he wants is somewhere nice to lie down and sleep for a bit, especially after getting thoroughly defeated by a good number of his sparring partners.

He knows that he should probably just stand up already and get going, but he’s kind of comfortable where he is. And before he knows it, he’s started to doze off.

He would have stayed asleep longer had it not been for a finger prodding at his cheek and a voice. “Hey. Are you awake? Felix?”

Felix scrunches up his face and shuts his eyes tighter. He’s half-asleep, but he’s coherent enough to mumble a very graceful, “Mrmph,” before starting to doze off again.

“Everyone’s eating dinner now. The Professor was wondering if you were going to join us.” A pause. A soft sigh when the speaker realizes that Felix is practically asleep again. “Felix?”

Felix sighs. So noisy. He cracks an eye open. Sylvain is crouched in front of him with his head cocked. Felix yawns a little and stretches his body, though his sore muscles complain greatly. He winces.

“Are you okay? Should I go get someone?”

“I’m fine.”

“Then, are you coming to dinner?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Sylvain chuckles politely. “Then come on then. We can’t keep our lovely Blue Lions ladies waiting, can we?” Sylvain stands up and waits.

Felix sighs and holds out a hand, making a grabbing motion when he doesn’t immediately feel what he’s looking for. Sylvain just stares. And that little reaction is all it takes for Felix to come back to the earth, like an anchor tied to an angel’s ankle and weighing them down. This isn’t the Sylvain he knows—the one who understands that Felix tends to train until he almost blacks out, the one that almost instinctively offers to help Felix up after training just about every time, the one that tease him for training like this.

This is Sylvain, the amnesiac—the one that watches with wary eyes and caution, the one that acts with uncomfortably stiff niceties, the one that is depressingly distant.

It feels like a hundred years passes by in that second, Felix awkwardly holding up an aching arm and Sylvain staring at him. He clears his throat. “Um. Can you help me up?” Felix’s delivery is flat. The question sounds more like a statement, a demand. He hopes it doesn’t sound too cold. He tries to explain, hoping that it might make him sound a little less demanding. “I might have overexerted myself.”

His Sylvain would get it. In fact, his Sylvain would tease him relentlessly for this with jokes laced with mild concern. He might have even fussed at him for treating his body so poorly.

This Sylvain only laughs politely before extending his own hand. “Ah, sorry. I didn’t know. Here, I’ll help you up then.” He takes Felix’s hand and pulls him up gently. “I guess that would explain why you’re sitting here, huh?”

Felix’s legs protest almost immediately, and if he were any weaker, he would have stumbled back to the ground like a newborn fawn. Instead, he manages to stay standing even if he dips a little and almost embarrasses himself by tripping a little.

Unfortunately, Sylvain didn’t miss the way that Felix wobbled on his way up. “You should really see Mercedes about this.”

“I’m fine.”

The walk to the dining hall is awkward. At least, to Felix it is. He can’t stand that Sylvain won’t just talk to him about—about _something._ He’s so used to Sylvain filling the space with little anecdotes, even if they were once about the girls he was seeing. However, Sylvain seems to be just fine, whistling a little tune as they walk.

Right as they’re stepping through the doors to the dining hall, Sylvain tells him, “We’re having something really good tonight. It’s one of my favorites.”

“Sautéed pheasant and eggs?”

Sylvain blinks. Then he smiles at him. “Yeah, actually! How’d you know?”

Well, he could smell it the second the door opened and see it on the plates of some of the soldiers. His eyes drift to where his class is sitting amongst the soldiers. Annette stands up and smiles at him, waving her arms. The rest of the Blue Lions spot him and Sylvain and smile or wave, gesturing at them to come over.

“It’s…” Felix feels stupid saying this, like a child proudly proclaiming something pointless, but he figures that getting Sylvain to remember him has to start with him being a little more open. Sylvain is more likely to trust him and believe him if he’s more open, after all. “It’s actually one of my favorites too.”

Sylvain grins at him. “That so? Well, what do you know! I don’t think that I’ve met many people who really like this dish that much.”

“It’s an acquired taste.”

“Felix, we’re all so glad to hear you’re okay now!” Annette gushes at him as they both near the table. “Here, Mercie and I grabbed you a dish so you don’t have to wait in line and get some cold food.”

“Might be a little cold anyway,” Mercedes adds, peeking over Annette, with a small smile. “Sorry. We did have to wait a bit.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Felix takes a seat next to Annette. Sylvain takes the empty seat across from him.

“Oh, hey! Also, is it true that you’ve been training all this time?” Annette asks.

Felix starts eating and pointedly ignores Annette’s question and Mercedes's slightly disappointed frown. He wonders who saw him walk into the training grounds and who told Mercedes and Annette that he had been training for so long. She tuts at him.

“Oh, Felix. I told you to keep your training limited to an hour. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

Felix doesn’t reply, instead shooting her a flat look. Mercedes has never been affected by his looks, and it doesn’t seem like she’s going to start any time soon.

It doesn’t help that Sylvain chimes in with, “I found him sitting against the wall. He asked me to help him up.”

Felix flicks his gaze up at Sylvain, but Sylvain seems more interested in looking over at Mercedes with a sly smirk. Felix blows out a puff of air, blowing his bangs out of his face.

“Snitch,” he mutters under his breath.

Sylvain laughs, now turning his look to Felix. It sounds a lot more genuine than those polite laughs Felix has heard from him earlier that day. And this smile that he’s wearing feels so much more like _Sylvain_ rather than that painfully normal façade he wears around strangers. “I had to,” he says. “You seem a bit like Dimitri—a bit too serious about training.”

It’s in this moment that Felix finds himself feeling a little lighter, like the burden and stress of trying to find Sylvain’s memories have loosened their grip on him. Sylvain must see something that he approves of—or, at the very least, something that he’s curious about—in Felix, and it must be something big enough to make him want to lessen that façade. If Sylvain’s willing to be playful like this, all Felix has to do is match him and lower his own guard.

 _Oh,_ Felix thinks as he forks some of the pheasant meat into his mouth, _you just wait, Gautier. I’ll bring you back._

Mercedes sighs softly, the kind of exasperated sigh that just radiates the _I’m not mad; I’m just disappointed_ type of energy. It always makes Felix feel bad, like he should be doing better. “I’ll check over you after dinner. Please be more careful.”

Felix is hardly listening to Mercedes, too busy thinking about what else he can do to crack away at Sylvain’s wariness. “No promises.”

-

It seems that all of the Blue Lions missed Felix more than Sylvain really thought. Even though this man—his supposed friend—is kind of cold and distant, everyone treats Felix with eagerness, respect, affection. In fact, as they eat dinner, it feels more and more like the Blue Lions have been holding onto stories and facts that they want to tell Felix—so much so that the conversation at the dinner table seems endless and erratic.

The conversation jumps from topic to topic—from the every-growing number of monastery cats and dogs to dreams to things that Felix supposedly missed while in the infirmary. Amusingly, in what seems to be one of Felix’s favorite stories of the night, Dedue recounts how Annette nearly burning down the kitchen—again, for the nth time this month—while trying to make Felix a get-well-soon snack that became so burnt and inedible that even Dimitri couldn’t bring himself to eat more than a few bites of it. Annette, clearly flustered, begs Dedue to spare them all the details and to change the subject, though the tiny smile on Felix seems to egg on everyone else at the table to continue on.

Poor Annette. Sylvain makes sure to throw in a few comments about how she also gave him an impromptu haircut when she was tending to overgrown plants in the greenhouse with a pair of hedge shears and didn’t notice that Sylvain was hiding there, crouched behind a few bushes, to escape a few angry ex-lovers that were roaming the monastery grounds in pursuit of him. She pouts at him as he tells this story.

“Don't pick on me, Sylvain, you bully!” Annette huffs at him, though there’s no real heat in her words—there’s _hardly_ ever any heat there.

Felix’s tiny smile twitches a little, and he clearly tries to hide the way that the tiny smile grows a little on his face by sipping his cup of water.

That smile—it makes Sylvain feel a little odd. He feels like he’s seen it before. He feels like he’s seen it more than he should have. He feels like he should recognize it, like he knows this grin like the back of his hand, but he can’t recall anything about it—about Felix.

By the end of the night, when dinner has been long over and everyone has returned to their rooms for bed, Sylvain wanders the halls of the monastery while his own thoughts violently swirl around like a tempest of confusion. His thoughts always float back to Felix, a figure shrouded in mystery in his head.

Throughout dinner, Sylvain had observed Felix carefully, curiously, learning more and more about him by simply watching him interact with his classmates. He feels like he’s seen Felix comment on Annette’s singing and cooking; he feels like he’s seen Felix banter with Ingrid about something insignificant as the proper way to eat the sautéed pheasant and eggs meal; he feels like he’s seen so much of Felix before.

Yet, no matter how hard he tries to think back into his childhood or into his early years at the monastery, he can’t dredge up a single memory of Felix—not a single silhouette or a name drop or anything. He doesn’t think he can remember a single time at the monastery where he’s never seen Felix, nevertheless gotten to know him. He thinks that he’s maybe getting a dream involving Felix confused with his memories.

It wouldn’t be that weird, he thinks. He’s been having a lot of thoughts about Felix, trying to figure out just who he is and what he’s really like. If the Professor says that he should know Felix, that they were close friends, there must be a reason why she said that, right? There must be a reason that Sylvain and Felix were friends in the first place, whether it is because of his personality or being classmates.

But Felix’s personality is nothing like Sylvain’s. If anything, Sylvain thinks what he’s seen of Felix’s behavior is more reminiscent of Dimitri’s behavior—stern, focused on training, with the slightest hint of a soft side somewhere behind all that imposing seriousness. Seeing how Sylvain still can’t remember a single time he’s seen Felix on the monastery grounds, he isn’t sure how likely it is that they became close friends over a shared class.

All this thought about Felix is frustrating and tiring. All Sylvain wants to do is figure out who in the world this Felix Fraldarius is to him. It feels like a missing puzzle piece to himself, stopping himself from figuring out himself.

He finds himself in the library, where a sole figure sits, slumped over a book on a table. Though just the back of the person’s head is visible, Sylvain recognizes this as Felix—the hairstyle, the clothes, the physique. Felix must have fallen asleep while studying something.

Sylvain quietly steps into the room and nudges Felix. He gives a disgruntled mumble but makes no move to wake up and leave.

Ordinarily, Sylvain would probably keep bothering him until he woke up, but Sylvain feels a little bad about waking him, especially when he learned about how tired Felix was from training. Plus, he feels that Felix is starting to very slowly grow on him. He isn’t so sure that Felix is who he initially thought he was anymore—a tyrannous, violent, mean-spirited person with little regard for those who care for him, if their very first run-in was anything to go off of.

Perhaps this odd feeling of friendship is the reason that Sylvain makes his way to a supply room closet and grabs a clean pillow—which was surprisingly more difficult than he had anticipated because of the dust in the room—and a blanket. He returns to the library, drapes the blanket over Felix’s shoulders and gently holds Felix’s head up to swap the book for the pillow.

When he thinks that Felix looks a little less likely to wake up with a stiff neck, he leaves the library and heads to his own bedroom for the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't updated this particular fic in a while so I'm glad to have something out for it! I didn't really make an outline for this story so if the pacing seems a little odd, that's why ^^;; I'll keep working on trying to make this a little more coherent, though, and I'll try to really make this into a story rather than a few vaguely connected chapters c:


	4. close my eyes (hope i wake up dead)

The soft noise of footsteps and muffled voices rouses Felix from his sleep. Felix clenches his eyes tighter and clears his thoughts, chasing the last little wisps of his dream, but it’s too late. He’s already awake.

He’s surprised to find that he isn’t in his dorm; instead, he is sitting at a table in the library. Come to think of it, he doesn’t remember making his way back to his dorm after trying to learn more on what’s ailing Sylvain so he supposes that it makes sense that he’s still here. He’s a little confused about the pillow and blanket, though. They aren’t his.

Felix isn’t too worried about that. He supposes that it could have been Ashe, sneaking into the library to nab one of those frivolous knights’ tales that he loves so much to read while winding down for bed. Ashe must have seen him sleeping at the table, and, as kind-hearted as he is, he must have ran out and gotten him a blanket and a pillow. Felix makes a mental note to thank him for that later.

He sits up and hurriedly wipes away the drool from his face before looking down at the book spread out at the table before him with a dour look. Though similar to the face he makes when he’s roused from his sleep earlier than he likes, this look is there for a different reason.

Felix barely learned anything from his studying the night prior. All he learned was that he had to be patient and try to slowly prompt memories from Sylvain through verbal cues, repetition, and a regular routine. He’d poured through countless books—alright, well, it’s not that many, but the pile beside him was still quite a sizable one—and they don’t seem to have a perfect strategy to help Sylvain remember who Felix was.

Some even claimed that this sort of amnesia could be permanent, that he would just have to accept it and make new memories with Sylvain. Felix shuddered to think that his very existence—his childhood, his whole _life_ —was completely lost. All those years that they spent together, all the times that they laughed together or fought together or even fought with one another, would be known to none but Felix, as if he had imagined it all.

Felix refuses to give that possibility further thought. He would rather _die_ than have that sort of outcome. He’ll get Sylvain to remember him. He’ll get Sylvain to remember him, even if it means that he’s trying throughout the rest of his life. Sylvain is too important to lose like that.

Felix tidies up the space and sets out to find Ashe to return the sheets.

-

It turns out that Ashe hadn’t been the one to drape him in that blanket. In fact, Ashe denied even going near the library, stating that he went to bed rather early because he felt a little more tired than usual. It was odd, but he offered to help Felix wash the blankets and take them back to the storage, which Felix took up his offer on.

Felix spends a majority of the day in the training hall again, though this time he finds that he isn’t able to train nearly as much as he did yesterday. Even with a day’s worth of training under his belt, he still feels so painfully out of practice. Worse, his training from the day before is weighing on his aching body. His muscles ache and tire easily, and pushing through the pain only seems to worsen things.

He spends more time sitting off to the side and watching people spar while taking notes on what they’re doing wrong, on what he would have done, on how he could optimize his own attacks and defenses. It’s frustrating because he just wishes he could throw himself into the middle of the action again, but instead, he is confined to the sidelines.

Around the afternoon, Ingrid drops by and finds him sulking on one of the benches. She takes a seat by him with a small nod of acknowledgment that Felix tiredly returns in reply.

“Are you alright, Felix?” she asks. “You look kind of out of it.”

“I need to rest.”

It’s true. It’s just not the whole truth. Felix is using his body’s feeble state as an excuse to sit by and get lost in his own thoughts. The only thing that he can really think about is Sylvain—how he misses Sylvain, how he just wants Sylvain to be normal again, how he knows about helping Sylvain regain his memories but feeling a little awkward about trying to interact more with the amnesiac that he’s hopelessly and fatally in love with.

Ingrid raises her eyebrows. “That’s new.”

“What?”

“You don’t really take rest days. Ever.” Her expression softens, and Felix loathes the pity in her eyes. “Are you sure you’re okay? Have you hurt yourself? Should I bring Mercedes?”

“Ingrid, enough. I’m fine.” Felix waves off her concerns. “I just need to rest.”

Ingrid doesn’t seem to believe him, but for his sake, she just gives a small nod. “If you say so.” She follows Felix’s gaze and watches as soldiers diligently train. “I’m glad you’re taking a break for once though.”

Felix doesn’t reply.

“You shouldn’t stay cooped up in here though. How about you take a quick lunch break?”

Felix gives her a look. A flat, unimpressed look. The universal _no_. He doesn’t want to waste any of his time eating when he could be using it to get his swordsmanship back up to where it once was.

After Ingrid levels him with a flat and unimpressed look of her own, Felix starts to give in. He is quite hungry, and he hasn’t particularly been paying attention to the fighting ta this point anyway. His mind would keep drifting back to Sylvain.

“Fine. But I’m not staying long.”

Ingrid smiles. “That’s fine. But once you see the menu, you might want to. It’s beast meat teppanyaki!” Well, Felix does enjoy a good beast meat teppanyaki. She stands up and waits for Felix to stand before slowly starting her way towards the dining hall.

Felix and Ingrid grab their lunches and find a spot to sit together. Ingrid doesn’t say much, but Felix doesn’t expect her to. She is busy eating her meal with a small smile on her face. Felix eats too, trying to keep his mind off of a certain redhead. He’s succeeding too.

Until Sylvain shows up at their table with a foxlike grin.

“Ingrid!” he croons. Ingrid hums at him. “So nice to see such a lovely little face in the dining hall!”

Ingrid’s contented smile fades as she rolls her eyes. She wipes her mouth on a napkin and turns to face Sylvain. “If you’re here to flirt, go somewhere else. Felix and I are having lunch.”

Sylvain looks up at Felix. He smiles. “Ah, you’ve taken a page out of my book, huh?” He winks. “I told you that there’s more to life than training, didn’t I?”

“I’m not here to flirt with Ingrid,” Felix says flatly.

At the same time, Ingrid sputters, clearly trying to hide her laughter. When Sylvain gives her a curious look, she openly laughs. “Do you really think that Felix is the type to ask any girl out to eat?” she asks. “Do you _really_ think Felix has that kind of interest—or skill?” She laughs again before adding, “We’re just eating together as friends, you dunce.”

Sylvain raises an eyebrow. “Ingrid, you make it sound like Felix has no interest in women at all.” When Ingrid and Felix exchange a look and end up giving Sylvain the same, tired look, Sylvain blinks. “Wait, what? Really?”

“Sylvain—”

“Don’t bother, Ingrid. He doesn’t know,” Felix cuts in dismissively, prodding at his food with his fork. “He doesn’t remember me, remember?”

Ingrid grimaces. “Well, at least we can teach him now, right?” She turns to Sylvain. “You’re right. He’s not interested in women. He’s interested in just one person.”

“Who?” Sylvain asks with a sly smile.

Before Ingrid can say anything incriminating, Felix frowns and flicks a wadded up napkin at her. It bounces off her shoulder before unceremoniously falling to the floor. Ingrid just rolls her eyes at him.

“You’re such a child, Felix. Grow up, will you?”

“You’re such a loudmouth. Keep your mouth shut, will you?” Felix mockingly replies.

Ingrid shakes her head and turns to Sylvain. “These lips are sealed, Sylvain.”

Sylvain hums. “Well, I can’t say I wasn’t expecting this, but it’s still pretty interesting. I didn’t take Felix for the romantic type. At all!”

Felix knows that he should stay and humor Sylvain, let him learn. He knows that he should help to dispel the others misconceptions that Sylvain might have of him to try and help him regain his memory. He knows.

Yet, there’s a part of him that just wants to stay away from Sylvain—to protect his aching pride and emotions. The more he’s around Sylvain, the more that he feels his feelings build up and killing him. Yearning. Frustration. Guilt. Sorrow. Desperation. They well up in his chest in a confusing, painful mix and drive him mad.

He wishes that he had told Sylvain how he felt before this all happened. He wishes that he had managed to protect Sylvain in that last battle, to keep him safe so that he didn’t have to suffer through all this confusion and memory loss. He wishes that he could just come back to Sylvain and have Sylvain treat him normally again—to talk with him about everything and anything, to confide in him, to give him those friendly one-armed hugs that left Felix feeling flushed and bubbly.

Felix shuts his eyes and picks up his plate. “I think I’m going to go. Goodbye.”

“Already?” Ingrid protests. “You hardly touched your food.”

Felix isn’t hungry anymore. He throws away his food and heads back to the training hall. To his surprise, Ingrid doesn’t come after him.

-

Sylvain watches as Felix leaves the dining hall, looking a shade paler than he usually is. He didn’t miss how Felix refused to look up at him; he didn’t miss how Felix’s voice was tinged with some sort of thickness, as if he had something caught in his throat.

“Hey, is he okay?” Sylvain prompts. “He looks…” He trails off, but Ingrid picks up on what he’s trying to say anyway.

“I’m not sure. He’s been acting a little weird when I saw him. He’s kind of spacey.” Ingrid winces. “Now that I say that out loud, there’s something definitely wrong with him. Felix isn’t like that.” She casts her gaze to the door that Felix had just left out of. “I think you should check on him.”

Sylvain raises an eyebrow. “Me? I mean, I don't mind, but I don't know if he'd really be open to that.”

Ingrid opens her mouth to speak but then she turns to see Sylvain’s confusion and frowns. “Right.” She shakes her head. “No, I’ll check on him.”

“Why’d you think I should do it?” Sylvain persists. He hardly knows Felix, and Felix doesn’t seem to like him that much anyway. He’s pretty sure that if he asked what was wrong, Felix would offer nothing but silence.

“Well, you two used to be really close. He’d tell you things that he’d never really want to talk about with the rest of the Blue Lions. Including me. And even Prince Dimitri.”

Sylvain hums. This confirms his suspicions. Felix must be in love with Dimitri. Ingrid had alluded to Felix’s attraction to men—and one particular man. With the way that she’s emphasizing Dimitri must mean that Dimitri must be quite close to Felix as well, right? Perhaps Felix had fallen for the prince.

Ingrid gives Sylvain a once-over. “Actually… Sylvain?”

“Yes, princess?” Sylvain fixes her with his typical flirty smile, but it doesn’t draw a reaction out of her—not even her exasperated eyeroll or frown. This must be serious.

“Could you check up on Felix?”

Sylvain blinks. “I don’t think that that’d be very productive for either of us.”

Ingrid shakes her head. “I think that he really needs someone to help him right now, and he doesn’t like when we bug him to open up.”

“You do realize that I’ll have to beg him to open up too, don’t you?”

Ingrid draws her eyebrows in, leaving her looking sullen. “I know, but maybe he’ll be a little more likely to say something because you’re _you_.” Sylvain opens his mouth to protest, but Ingrid beats him to the punch. “Just give it a try, please? You’ve forgotten all about him so wouldn’t this be a chance to learn more about him?”

Sylvain bites back his skepticism and smiles. “If it makes your pretty little smile come back, then I’ll do my best.”

-

Sylvain finds Felix in the training hall, sitting down and watching the other soldiers of the army training. Felix’s eyes drift in his direction, but his expression doesn’t change a single bit, still looking as stern as ever.

Sylvain ambles over and stands beside him. For some reason, he feels anxious, as if Felix will lash out at him, as if he’s treading the fine line between being a concerned acquaintance and being plain nosy. Yet, a part of him is completely calm.

“Hey.”

Felix looks up at him. He nods in silent acknowledgment. 

Something about him seems different. Sylvain admits that he hasn't known Felix for very long—well, he doesn't remember knowing Felix—but whenever he'd been around Felix, he had been on-edge and practically radiated energy and ambition. Here, he looks so very tired, as if he longs for years and years of sleep. He looks sickly, listless, almost like he's mourning. 

Perhaps Sylvain recognizes this expression, this posture, is because he'd worn that very same one quite a few times in his childhood.

“I had a question. I’ll get out of your hair if you just answer me.”

“What?” Even his voice sounds tired.

Sylvain can't keep the concern out of his voice. “Is something wrong?”

Felix furrows his brows. “Is something wrong?” he echoes, as if in disbelief that Sylvain would even ask such a thing. “No. Nothing’s wrong. Why?” When Sylvain doesn’t have an immediate answer, Felix sighs. “Ingrid put you up to this, didn’t she?”

Sylvain scoffs a little and folds his arms up above his head. “What, can’t a guy just be worried for his classmate?” Even Sylvain wants to wince at the insincerity in his own words. Don’t get him wrong; he’s worried for Felix, but he feels so wrong lying to Felix like this. He didn’t come on his own accord, on his own worries and concerns for Felix.

In the end, Sylvain ends up confessing sheepishly, “Yeah, Ingrid asked me to check up on you.”

Felix clicks his tongue. “Tell her I’m fine and that I don’t need her mothering me.”

“Come on, Felix. She’s just worried about you. Apparently, you’ve been acting weird.” Sylvain frowns. “Just tell me what’s on your mind. Or go tell Ingrid yourself. She just wants to help.” He pauses. “I want to help.”

It’s not a lie. If there’s one thing that Sylvain wishes that he could do more is help others. After all, growing up as a disappointment to your ever-insatiable parents and a life-ruining brat to your murderous brother does make you feel pretty useless and harmful all the time, always seeking acceptance and love and—

No, this is about Felix, not Sylvain. He just wants to help Felix feel better. He doesn’t want Felix to feel like this because it worries others and lowers morale and Sylvain kind of misses the way his lips quirked up in that small smile yesterday—

Wait, what? Where did that come from? Sylvain shakes that thought away, though he makes a mental note to address this thought later when he’s alone.

To Sylvain’s surprise, Felix doesn’t lash out at him. He doesn’t storm out of the room or insist that Sylvain is some terrible blight on his life. He doesn’t insist that Sylvain leave his sight or start any huge commotion. Felix just pinches the bridge of his nose, his eyes clenched shut, and sighs. Then, he says something.

“Sylvain,” Felix says quietly, “I want to help _you_.”

“Me?” Sylvain's thoughts come to a halt. He raises his eyebrows in surprise.

“Yes. You.” Felix shakes his head. “You still don’t remember me.”

Sylvain admits that he would like to have his memory back—he would _really_ like to have that part of him back so he doesn’t feel like he’s missing out some huge thing whenever his class is talking about Felix or something—but he didn’t know that Felix was so affected by this. Sylvain just balks.

Felix doesn’t seem to take his silence very well. He tenses up and averts his gaze with his eyes narrowed and his lips pulled into a taut frown. “No, it’s nothing," he mutters. "Never mind.”

“No, wait.” Sylvain’s speaking before he realizes it. “I’m just surprised that you felt that way. I guess I would be pretty upset too if someone completely forgot about me so I understand why you want to help me.”

“That’s not why.” Felix’s response is quick, is terse.

If not to get Sylvain to remember him, if not to feel some sort of validation and rekindled sense of friendship, then what? “Then?”

Felix meets Sylvain’s eyes briefly. In that split second where their gazes meet, Sylvain feels an odd feeling, one that he isn’t able to verbalize even in his thoughts. Eventually, Felix looks down without saying a word.

Another layer of mystery to a man already so mysterious to Sylvain. All Felix seems to do is fascinate Sylvain. Felix, who’d shown him quite an explosive frustration and the softest fondness in just two encounters. Felix, who’d seemed like a loner focused solely on training yet had fallen for the prince. Felix, who’d seemed selfish at first but was now showing that he seemed to care more for Sylvain than he thought.

Sylvain wants to learn more about him.

“Then help me,” Sylvain says, drawing Felix’s attention. Felix looks up at him. His expression is different now, his tired eyes looking quite surprised. Sylvain doesn’t look away and nor does Felix. “Help me remember you and everything I forgot.”


	5. don't wanna live without you (don't leave me out here to die)

Byleth has been seeing Felix and Sylvain spending more time together around the monastery, between battles. They’re usually sitting down and talking. She doesn’t particularly want to nose her way into what they’re talking about—especially given how testy Felix can still be and how he’s probably drop whatever he and Sylvain are doing as soon as he realizes someone’s watching—but she is curious as to how they’re doing.

After all, the last time that she’d seen them together had been at dinner all those nights ago—when Felix had been deemed healthy enough to leave the infirmary by Mercedes. She hadn’t been able to actually see how they were, seated at the opposite side of the table, but she remembered that it was the first night in a while that the Blue Lions felt _complete_ again. The table had been brimming with joy and relief, and whenever someone wasn’t talking, a smile was sure to be present on their face.

She shudders to think of how it would have felt if both Sylvain and Felix had both died. _Yes_ , she assures herself, _this was for the best._

Reminded of a mealtime with her class, she asks them—just the two of them—to share a meal with her. It’s a surefire way of seeing their dynamic in person without having to approach them directly.

Sylvain and Felix both accept, and they both seem quite pleased to see a plateful of two-fish sauté placed before them when they arrive. Byleth offers them both a small smile as they take their seats in front of her, beside one another.

“When I woke up this morning, I didn’t think that I’d be spending this mealtime with our beautiful professor!” Sylvain offers Byleth a smile back, though his is accompanied by a wink.

Felix, notably, doesn’t smile, but Sylvain’s comment only seems to make him frown even more. Byleth wonders if everything really is as fine between the two of them as she had once thought.

“How have you two been doing?” she prompts. “How is your training?” She can’t help but to add the second question. Even amongst all the lighthearted scenery and moods at the monastery, they are still at war.

“Fine,” is all that Felix says before he starts to eat. “And my training’s getting better.”

Byleth can just barely hear it in his voice after he mentions training— _but it’s not good enough_. Concerned, she takes a second to look over Felix. His body language isn’t as closed off as usual—like when he’s crossing his arms and turned away. His expression is still stern, but it isn’t one of the faces that he makes when he’s frustrated or upset.

He’s probably been fine, as he said. He must simply be worried that his swordsmanship or his magic isn’t back up to par yet, which is fine considering that he had essentially been resurrected. He’ll be fine. She relaxes a little and turns her gaze to Sylvain, a silent cue for him to speak.

“I’ve been doing alright, but I’m certainly much better now that I’m here with you.”

After seeing his carefree attitude and his smile—his _real_ smile, Byleth notes after remembering all those times when Sylvain tried to hide his pain with another smile—Byleth carefully assures herself that Sylvain is probably fine. The return of his flirting is annoying, Byleth admits, but she’d learned long ago why it is that Sylvain behaves in such a manner. She simply overlooks it but mentally makes a note that Sylvain must not remember everything if he’s still chasing women like this.

She also can’t help but to notice that Sylvain hadn’t answered half of what she had asked. “Your training?” She raises an eyebrow.

Sylvain laughs a little, a sheepish sound. “Well, I’m doing my best. And hey, my best is pretty damn good, don’t you think?”

“No,” Felix replies easily, not missing a beat. “You hardly train, and it shows. Your training is lacking, and your efforts are pitiful.”

“Ouch, Felix.” Sylvain makes a pitiful face, a small childish pout. “Professor, you don’t think I’ve been lacking, do you?”

Byleth just stares at him. Unfortunately, there _is_ a reason she hasn’t been making him fight in auxiliary battles.

Sylvain laughs again. “Everybody’s a critic!” He shrugs as he starts to eat. “No, but I think I’m doing just fine with my training.”

Felix gives a huff of exasperation. Byleth sees his expression slowly morph into one of bitterness. She knows what’s coming. She grimaces and hopes that Felix doesn’t come out swinging full force with whatever he’s thinking.

“You _would_ be doing fine if you weren’t spending all your time flirting,” Felix mutters under his breath.

Sylvain gives Felix this flat look for a split second. “This again?”

 _Again?_ Byleth thinks briefly.

“How many times do I have to tell you, Felix? There’s a lot more to life than trapping yourself in that cramped little training hall and working yourself into a stupor.” Sylvain’s tone is friendly, teasing even, though his words carry some heat.

And from Felix’s scowl, Byleth can tell that they’ve argued about this quite a bit.

“You—” Felix flicks his gaze to Byleth and grimaces. He cuts himself off and forks some fish into his mouth.

“What?” Sylvain prompts.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t just say, ‘Nothing,’ like that and expect me to know what you’re talking about.” Sylvain looks to Byleth with a small smile. “Professor, talk some sense into Felix.” It’s comes off as a joke, but perhaps he really does want some help defusing the situation.

A few different options of how to respond flit around in her head. She could just stay silent and let this pan out. Perhaps Felix wants to air some grievances with Sylvain in front of someone who has authority over him. Perhaps Sylvain wants to do the same with Felix. But if they’re just going to argue like this, a long back-and-forth with no clear ‘winner,’ wouldn’t it better to just step in and stop them from arguing?

Oh, but what would she say? If she takes Sylvain’s side, it’d only further anger Felix—something that she definitely doesn’t want to do if she’s trying to get them to be friends again. If she takes Felix’s side, Sylvain might be upset with her, even if he doesn’t show it, but he’s less likely to hold it against her.

Her mind is made up.

“Sylvain, Felix is right,” she says calmly. “Your training has been stagnant for some time, and flirting with women isn’t going to help you.”

Felix gives a contented hum, like he’s agreeing. Meanwhile, Sylvain just kind of stares, a little surprised. Then, he gives a thin smile.

“I suppose you’re right, Professor. But don’t you think it’s best to have a little bit of fun now and then? You can’t keep working yourselves down to the bone.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Byleth notices Felix frowning, clenching a fist. He opens his mouth to say something, but she cuts him off.

“We’re in the middle of a war,” Byleth quickly points out. “You remember that, don’t you?”

Sylvain hesitates. “I do.”

“A little training goes a long way. It’ll save your life. It’ll save the lives of those you care about too.”

 _Will it?_ a pesky thought persists. _Sylvain and Felix have trained all their lives and still died. Sothis had to resurrect them._

Byleth pushes that thought to the back of her mind and continues, “So will you train a little harder? You can flirt with women all you want after the war. You can’t do that if you’re dead.”

Sylvain laughs. “Well, how can I turn down such a solemn request from such a beautiful woman?” He winks at Byleth. “I’ll train much harder, then—and I’ll protect you during the war, Professor.”

Both he and Byleth are startled by Felix suddenly slamming his hands on the table and standing.

“Felix?” Sylvain asks, surprised.

Felix picks up his plate and nods at Byleth. “Thanks, Professor. I had a good time.”

 _Did you_? she wants to say, biting back a small smile. Instead, she nods back at him. “Off to train?” she asks instead, earning herself a nod from Felix. She smiles a little at him. “Then do your best.”

As Felix leaves to return his plate to the workers at the dining hall, Sylvain turns to Byleth. His expression is much more serious than the flirty, carefree one he typically wore—than the one he was wearing just prior.

“Professor?”

“Yes, Sylvain.”

“Felix isn’t always like that.” It’s not a question, but it’s phrased like one.

“He’s not,” she confirms. Byleth has a feeling that Sylvain already knows this though.

“Something must be on his mind then. I don’t see what else it could be.” Sylvain’s look flickers, something concerned.

“Many things are on his mind, I’m sure.”

A silence grows between them. It’s not uncomfortable, but it’s not comfortable either. It’s clear that they’re both thinking about the same thing though—the same person.

“Hey, can I tell you something?”

Perhaps Byleth was on to something when she’d thought that they two of them wanted to air out some of their grievances with each other. “Of course. I’m here for you.”

Sylvain sighs. “Well, I’ve been spending more time with Felix, like you’ve asked me to—but he hasn’t really said much. About me or himself. We usually just make small talk, and it’s a little frustrating.” He hesitates. “Are you _really_ sure that he was my friend?” Sylvain jokes, but it’s weak and falls short.

“He _was_ your friend. One of your closest friends, if not _the_ closest.” Byleth shakes her head. “This type of behavior—Felix is simply like this. He doesn’t quite like to talk about things that leave him open.”

“Open,” Sylvain echoes. “Vulnerable?” He lets out a small sigh, a frown gracing his face. “A conversation is give-and-take. A friendship is too. If he doesn’t offer me anything, then I’m not sure how I’m supposed to remember him—or even get closer to him.”

“You’re right. But are you giving too? Or do you just want to take?” When Sylvain hesitates on answering, Byleth folds her hands atop the table in front of her. “Do you really want to be Felix’s friend again? Or are you doing this so that we’ll stop asking you to spend time with Felix?”

Sylvain shakes his head. “It’s not like that. I want to get to know Felix better.” He pauses. “I don’t really know why.” When Byleth gives him a skeptical look, he quickly corrects himself. “Okay, well, that’s not true. I know why. It feels like something’s missing. I don’t like not remembering someone.”

With that, it’s like a floodgate had opened up.

“I feel bad not remembering him. He seems a bit broken up over this, and I don’t want to cause him any trouble. But it’s just so frustrating that he insists that he wants to help me remember and doesn’t really say anything. When I ask him to tell me about himself, he’s vague or he just gives up trying when I don’t remember anything.”

“Then persist.”

“I’ve tried, Professor. I really have.” Sylvain slumps down in his chair. “I’ve bugged him all day, and I’ve chased him around this monastery. He just doesn’t talk.” Frustration, near tangible, lingers over his expression. “I still know next to nothing about him.”

Byleth nods. She knows Felix. He must not be taking this very well, even though he’s had weeks to think on this. But she knows Sylvain, and she knows that he must be feeling discouraged. It must be even harder to feel that his efforts are doing anything especially if he hasn’t remembered anything.

“Then might I suggest something?”

“Of course, Professor.”

-

Felix whittles down his frustration—his despondence, his fears, his thoughts—through training. His mind is clear. His mind is one with his body.

He’s been making pretty good progress with his training since he’s left the infirmary. To be fair, he supposes that _anyone_ would be getting better with all the hours of practice he’s been putting in to avoid thinking about Sylvain.

Ever since Sylvain’s asked Felix to help him remember, Sylvain’s been following him around the monastery. He’s asked Felix to reintroduce himself, to remind him of things that they’d done together, to act like he normally would with him—but Felix can’t. He just can’t. He’s tried, but words clash and fumble in his head. There’s so much he wants to say, so much he wants to convey, but it’s so hard and it’s so _painful_. He always shuts down or shuts Sylvain down, even if he doesn’t mean too.

And after a while, Sylvain started to give up on him.

“What happened to wanting to help me remember?” Sylvain had said. “Were you just saying that?”

“No.”

“Then?”

Felix hadn’t been able to answer then, but after that conversation, hundreds of words he could have said crowded his head. He should have just been honest and persistent. He should have asked Sylvain to be patient, to understand that speaking about these kinds of things leaves Felix leaving anxious and sad. He should have just told Sylvain that he isn’t good at talking about the past and all that they’d been through—their brothers’ deaths, his father’s death, all those times during their time at the academy where Felix was left to watch as Sylvain recklessly hurt himself over and over with women who cared more for his Crest than they did him.

It was too bad because it looked to be too late. After that, Sylvain had gone back to flirting, leaving Felix watching his back with pain in his chest.

It felt like Sylvain had cast Felix aside—like he didn’t really care anymore about remembering him. After all, not remembering Felix wasn’t particularly causing him any trouble in his everyday life, he’s sure. He could still flirt with all the women he wanted to and he could still talk with all his other friends. While Felix understood Sylvain’s frustrations, his indifference left Felix feeling like a door had closed and that he had been left out.

 _Don’t leave me out here to die. Don’t leave me out here without you. Don’t leave me when you’re one of the only people I care about anymore—when you're one of the last people alive with me._ Felix’s hurt resounds in his heart, in his head, like an echo down an empty corridor. It haunts him. _Don’t, don’t, don’t. Please don’t._

“Felix?”

Felix jumps a little at the sound of his name. He turns around, and he’s a little surprised to see Sylvain. Felix sheathes his sword and gives Sylvain a slow nod of acknowledgment—wary but yearning eyes.

Sylvain smiles a little. Remarkably, a far cry from his usual reactions to Sylvain's smiles, Felix doesn’t like it. It looks like he’s about to ask him something stupid.

“Hey, do you maybe want to spar?”

Felix stares at him.

Sylvain rubs the back of his neck with his hand and laughs. “I know. Me? Training? Weird, huh?”

 _The professor must have put him up to this_ , Felix decides, and he sighs a little. _Can’t you come to me without having someone forcing you to?_

Nonetheless, Felix nods at the weapons rack. “Fine. Get ready then.”

Felix watches as Sylvain idles at the weapons rack, picking up a lance and then weighing it in his hands before setting it down. He picks up a sword, considers it, and then sets it back down. Felix crosses his arms.

“Hey. How about a game?”

Felix raises an eyebrow. “Already trying to weasel your way out of training?”

“No, no. It’s related to training.” Sylvain finally picks up the training lance again and plants the butt of it on the ground, leaning against it. “It’ll be fun.” He smiles. “Trust me.”

“Training isn’t some kind of game.”

“Come on. It’s just something to spice up the monotony of training. You’re still going to get to train.” Sylvain chuckles. “I mean, if you’re worried I’ll win, I can always go easy on you.”

Felix raises an eyebrow. “What are you trying to say?”

“Whoa, don’t give me that look. I’m just saying that if you want an even playing field, I’d happily go easy.”

Felix narrows his eyes. This is definitely some kind of trap, but Felix can’t stand that Sylvain is talking down on his skill. “What’s the game?” he demands.

Sylvain brightens. “Oh, you’ll play?”

“The game," Felix insists. "What is it?”

“Well, it’s just sparring, but the winner can ask any question they like, and the loser _has_ to answer, no matter what.” When Felix lets out a sigh, Sylvain quickly adds, “I know it’s a bit of a dumb premise, but give it a try.”

“If you want to ask me a question, just do it already. Don’t make it convoluted. It's a waste of your time and mine.”

“Sounds like someone isn’t confident that they’re going to win.” Sylvain smiles smugly. “What do you think I’ll ask you? Something dirty?” he teases. Felix stirs, glaring at Sylvain, who only laughs. “Don’t worry. We won’t play then. But I’ll know it’s because you’re scared of losing and answering a few questions.”

It’s absolutely some form of provocation. It isn’t subtle in the slightest. It also explains why Sylvain wants to train instead of running away to flirt with some girls.

But it’s also intriguing. What is it that Sylvain’s planning? Plus, if it means that Sylvain will finally take his training more seriously—if it means that Felix won't have to worry if Sylvain will keep himself safe during future battles—and Felix can still train, that's a plus, right?

“I’ll play your stupid game, but don’t hold back.”

Sylvain laughs. “Alright! I’ll be sure to give you a challenge then, but don’t come crying to me when you lose.”

 _Do you remember when I_ _would come crying to you?_ Felix thinks. _Do you remember all those times you'd joke about me being a crybaby? I doubt it._

“Cocky words for someone who hasn’t voluntarily stepped into the training hall until now.” Felix gestures at the spot in front of him. “Hurry up and come here."

“Hey! I’ll have you know that I _do_ come here time to time. Gotta keep myself fit for the ladies.”

Felix rolls his eyes and places a hand on the training sword. “Shut up and just start the match then.”

With a small smile, Sylvain strikes first. It’s a little surprising how much strength that he hits with, but Felix deflects the blow and swings his sword towards Sylvain. Sylvain just barely dodges it, but keeps his distance, slowly circling Felix with his attention locked on Felix.

“Scared?” Felix taunts at him.

“Course not.” Sylvain jabs at Felix, but Felix had anticipated it. He parries with ease, feeling a cheeky smirk tug at his lips when Sylvain’s eyes widen as his parry leaves Sylvain barely keeping his balance.

Felix is stronger, faster, more skilled. He quickly feints a stab, and when Sylvain inevitably tries to block it, Felix strikes elsewhere. Sylvain tries to block it too, though it’s clumsy and weak. The force of Felix’s attack leaves Sylvain stumbling a little. Felix takes advantage of this to strike again and again until Sylvain unceremoniously falls over, looking up at him with a small pout.

Felix bats the lance out of his hand and aims the blade of his training sword at Sylvain. “Do you yield?”

Sylvain looks over at his lance, clearly surprised, and then back up at Felix. “Best two of three?”

Felix rests a fist on his hip. “You’re just setting yourself up for failure.” _Just what are you trying to get out of this?_ Felix wonders. _I’m not going to throw just for you to ask a stupid question and gloat, but just_ what _are you aiming at?_

“That was just a warm-up.” Sylvain reaches for his lance. “I’ll do better. Watch.”

Felix shakes his head. “Fine.”

To Felix’s surprise, that last match did seem to be a warm-up. Sylvain’s fighting from then on becomes more confident, more graceful, more effective. His strikes are powerful, his movements swift and calculated. It’s a startling difference from when he was ‘warming up.’ Sylvain lands more hits on Felix and seems to be working hard.

Yet, it’s not enough. Felix still manages to knock him down and out of bounds after roughly twenty minutes of strenuous sparring, both of them sweating and panting by the end of it. Sylvain looks up at him.

“Damn, looks like you got me again, huh?” he concedes with a small smile.

Felix instinctively holds out a hand, and just as he realizes what he's done, just as he is about to take his hand back and make up some weak excuse, Sylvain eyes it and takes it to help himself up. Sylvain pats down his outfit, little clouds of dust and dirt left suspended in the air briefly.

“Alright, so you have one point. Out of three. You haven’t won yet.” He grins and picks up his lance. “I’ll win this time.”

“You’re really committed to winning this ‘game,’” Felix muses, “but fine. If you want to keep losing, I don’t mind.” 

A part of him can't help but to think about how this is so much like how Sylvain would have been like had he not lost his memory; from the suggestion of a game to make training exciting to Sylvain's competitiveness in this game, it's all painfully _him._ No, it's not like Sylvain died or he was replaced with someone else—this is _still_ Sylvain. Still the same old playful, competitive, flirty bastard.

Felix just wishes that said bastard would realize how Felix isn't some new person and how he's _still_ the same old Felix that he's known throughout his life.

The next round, Felix wins again, making him the winner.

"Best three out of five?”

Felix sheathes his sword and crosses his arms. “You’re a sore loser. Just let me ask my question.”

“Then will we play again?”

“Maybe.”

"Then what’s your question?”

Felix sighs. “What are you really trying to ask me with this stupid game?”

Sylvain considers this question for a while. “Hmm, well, it’s a good incentive to get me training again,” he starts, “but honestly, I came by wanting to ask you something.”

Felix stares at him and then sighs again, shaking his head. “Oh, for the Goddess’s sake, just ask me the question then. You’re just being weird.”

Sylvain grins. “How about I ask if I win in the next sparring session?” Sylvain holds up his lance. “I still have some energy left in me.”

Felix looks at the lance, and he sees it shaking a little. Sylvain’s all talk; his body is so tired that it’s trembling, covered in sweat and dirt. His stamina is pitiful, but he must have used most of his energy fighting Felix in the first ‘official’ round. Felix had been particularly rough that round.

“Okay,” Felix finds himself saying. “One last match. If you win, you ask your question or whatever.”

“Great. But don’t you dare pull any punches.”

Felix himself is quite tired too, but he still has quite a bit of energy left in him. Yet, he sucks up his ego, knowing that Sylvain is bound to gloat, and he tries his best to make his loss look believable.

"You win.” Felix pushes himself up to a sitting position as Sylvain crouches in front of him. “Your question?”

Sylvain frowns at him. “You threw that match.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did. You weren’t fighting like you were before.” Was Felix that obvious?

“I’m tired.”

“You don’t seem tired.” Sylvain cocks his head, and his sweat-dampened hair sweeps across his forehead. For a split second, Felix’s eyes follow a sweat droplet that caresses Sylvain’s nice jawline, passes just under his pretty, now smiling lips and over the handsome curve of his throat; for a split second, Felix feels his heart skip a beat.

“Were you really that curious to know what I wanted to say?” Sylvain teases, drawing Felix’s attention away from his thoughts.

Felix doesn’t reply, but his silence says all. _Yes,_ it screams, _yes, yes, yes. You don’t know even the_ half _of it. My curiosity was killing me._

Sylvain laughs a little. “Okay, okay. Fine, then. I’ll ask my question.” He pauses like he’s thinking deeply on his question, though Felix is sure that Sylvain is trying to build suspense. Asshole.

Felix frowns. “Why aren’t I what?” He furrows his brows. He’s pretty sure he knows just what Sylvain’s talking about, but he wants to be sure before he lays his feelings out. It’d be terribly embarrassing if Sylvain isn’t asking what Felix thinks he is, after all.

"Why won’t you talk to me? I thought you wanted to help me.”

Felix shuts his eyes and lets out a small sigh. He hears Sylvain start to protest, like he’s about to tell Felix to forget about it all, but Felix doesn’t give him a chance to continue.

“I’m just not good at talking about stuff.” He winces at his own wording. “Emotions. The past.” Even though he tries to elaborate, he feels his words getting tangled up and stuck in his throat. He feels like he’s picking at a bandage, trying to remove it without hurting himself—in the end, he’ll be left with an open wound, bound to get hurt again.

“Hmm.” Sylvain looks sympathetic. “But what about those times where I asked you to just tell me about yourself? You can’t give me a simple introduction?”

Felix keeps his gaze trained on his training sword, lying on the ground in front of him. “It just doesn’t feel right. I’ve known you since I was little. Since I could barely talk. Since I could barely walk. Introducing myself again—it’s as if I was never in your life.”

Sylvain run a hand through his hair. “I get it’s hard for you, but I want to remember you. I do. But I just can’t if you don’t give me anything to work with.”

“What do you want me to do?” Felix gives Sylvain a haggard look. “I told you that I’m not good at talking about things. I prefer to let my blade do the talking.”

“Well, you’re talking now, aren’t you?” Sylvain nudges the sword towards Felix. “If sparring gets you to open up like this, then we’ll spar.”

Felix shakes his head. “No more today. You can barely stand.”

“Felix—”

Felix picks up the sword and pries the lance from Sylvain’s hands. He returns them both to the weapons rack. He makes his way back to Sylvain and stands in front of him. “I’m sorry.” His apology is stilted, awkward, but he’s being as honest as he can. “Just, um, be patient with me. Please. I’ll try to be more open with you.”

"Promise?"

Felix blinks. If only Sylvain knew the importance of promises—but he will soon enough.

“I promise.”


	6. far away (in another time and space)

Days start to pass by slowly, and Sylvain returns to Felix’s side, rather than spending all of his time with women. He trains with Felix, though he doesn’t seem to always expect any sort of deep talk from him. Instead, he takes in Felix’s criticisms and advice on his technique, and Felix hears out Sylvain’s critiques. It’s not to say that Felix doesn’t see Sylvain walking around the monastery with a woman clinging to his arm with lovestruck eyes, but progress is progress.

And besides, Sylvain sticks around a little more when Felix genuinely tries to be more open with Sylvain.

During their second day of training together, he musters up his courage and offers his best attempt at a reintroduction.

“I’m Felix Hugo Fraldarius,” he tells Sylvain while they’re both taking a break and catching their breaths. He doesn’t miss how Sylvain perks up. “I… I am the youngest son of Rodrigue Achille Fraldarius, and we’re from the Fraldarius territory, southeast for Gautier.”

It’s a bare introduction, but Sylvain seems to take in the information with great interest. “Fraldarius? Like Glenn Fraldarius?” he asks.

Felix blinks. “You—you remember Glenn?” _But not me?_

Sylvain hums. “Of course. I just—I never remembered him having a younger brother.”

Felix casts his gaze away. “Well, he has one. And that’s me.” He pinches his eyebrows together in concern.

“Is there anything else I should know about you?” Sylvain prompts.

Felix starts to shake his head, but Sylvain cuts him off.

“No, let me reword that. Tell me more about you.”

Felix sighs. “That’s a loaded request.” But he thinks about it nonetheless. He thinks of all his hobbies, all his skills, thinks of his personality. Nothing really strikes him as interesting or noteworthy. “I excel with a sword,” he says flatly.

Sylvain frowns a little. “Well, do you do anything other than train?”

Felix used to. He used to follow Sylvain to the lake, their bare feet dangling in the water. He used to hang near the stables while Sylvain checked up on his horse, Petunia, Sylvain smiling and cooing at her as he insisted Felix come over and pet her. He used to sit around with Sylvain outside the cathedral, in the quietest parts, where cats would gather and lie in the sun, gently running his hands through their soft fur and occasionally letting his eyes wander over to where Sylvain was sitting and sneaking the cats some snacks.

But that was all before Sylvain forgot him. But that was back in another time.

“Not really,” Felix ends up admitting.

Sylvain wrinkles his nose. “Really? I mean, don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with training, but you can’t just stay in here. It’s not fun. And you’ll wear yourself out.” Sylvain pauses. “How about you come with me? For a night out?”

A night out. Sylvain, sitting at the local pub with women swooning over him. Sylvain, smiling and taking one lucky woman home with no regard for Felix. Felix shakes his head. “I’m not interested.” He stands and picks up his training sword. “Are you ready for another round?”

Sylvain seems to cling onto the fact that Felix trains like there’s nothing else worth doing with intrigue.

The next day that they’re both in the training hall, Sylvain asks, “So why is it that you train all the time?”

Felix tightens his grip on his sword and strikes the straw dummy in front of him before turning to Sylvain. “To get better. Why else?”

“Is that really your only reason?” Doubt colors his voice.

Felix raises an eyebrow.

"Why else?” Sylvain prompts.

Felix sheathes his sword and crosses his arms. “I told you. I just want to get better. I want to be the best.”

“And once you’re there?”

Felix stays silent. He’s given this thought. He’s already expressed this kind of line of thought to the professor—he trains for a battle with his brother that will never come. Being the best was never the most important goal; he wanted to prove himself, even though he knows that he’ll never be able to live up to his younger self’s dream of one day beating Glenn.

But he’s fighting and getting stronger, faster, _better_ , for other reasons. He wants to be able to protect those he cares about. He doesn’t want to let anyone else get hurt or die under his watch.

Sylvain’s amnesia is only a reminder that he wasn’t strong enough to protect him.

“How about another hobby?” Sylvain smiles. “I mean, if you want, I’m sure Mercedes or Dedue or even Ashe can help you take up cooking.”

“Not interested.” Felix turns his attention away from Sylvain. “I don’t need a hobby. It won’t make me happy.”

"Then what will?”

 _Keeping you all safe. Keeping you all here._ Felix can’t bring himself to voice his thoughts so he lets out a small sigh and removes his sword to train again. _Keeping you alive and well, Sylvain._

“You don’t have to train,” Sylvain insists. “Even if your father and your brother trained like this, you don’t have to.”

Felix falters. Sylvain’s words—they’re a projection. Felix can hear the underlying pity in his voice. He supposes that he can see where Sylvain’s thought process is coming from, considering that a majority of Sylvain’s youth has been ruled under his father’s iron fist of expectations. A lot of Sylvain today is rebellion, frustration at how he’s treated by his father and the people who value him only for his Crest.

“I’m doing this because I want to. No one’s making me.” Felix sighs. “I’m telling you that I’m doing this to be stronger.” He pauses. Takes a deep breath. “To protect myself and those I care about.”

The pause before Sylvain speaks fills Felix with dread. He isn’t sure what Sylvain could say to discourage him, but he fears that Sylvain is judging him—and making that awful comparison between him and Glenn.

Instead, Sylvain simply hums, giving a nod of understanding. “But those you care about also probably want you to take care of yourself and have some fun from time to time.”

“I guess. But I’ll do that after I know that they’re safe.”

“How about you take some time off to show them that you’re okay? And then go back to training? I’m sure the rest of the Blue Lions would love to see that you aren’t working yourself down to your bone.”

“We’re in the middle of a war. I can’t afford to waste time.”

That brings the conversation down to a close, but Felix has a feeling that Sylvain isn’t done wondering about Felix’s tendency to train whenever he can.

One day, Felix finds Sylvain sitting around in the training hall as he comes in. Sylvain isn’t dressed in any protective gear for training, and nor is he holding any training weapons. He looks lax.

When he spots Felix walking in, Sylvain springs up.

"Hey, Felix,” he greets. “Here to train?”

"Yes.” His reply is slow, cautious. “Are you?”

“Not exactly.” Sylvain stands in front of Felix, blocking him. “I was here to invite you out to grab something to eat.”

Felix just stares at him.

“Come on, Felix. It’ll be fun! It’s just you, me, and a few friends.”

“A few friends,” Felix echoes, crossing his arms. “And who are these ‘friends?’”

Sylvain stalls a little. “Well, it’s just some friends,” he says, smiling and letting his eyes flit around the room. He rocks back and forth on his feet.

“Sylvain.” His voice is flat, but curiosity—and a yearning for the past, for when Sylvain would be playful and coy just like this—rises in him. “Who?”

“Come and find out.” Sylvain starts to walk past Felix, but he pauses when he’s just past Felix. “It’s not anything you have to worry about. Just some lunch with some friends.”

Felix sighs. “I don’t have _time_ for you and your girlfriends—”

“It’s not girls! It’s our friends. You know, from the Blue Lions house. People we both know.” Sylvain shakes his head. “A little bonding wouldn’t hurt you.”

 _But it could_ , Felix thinks, _If I get close to you again, and I lose you because I’m just not strong enough—I don’t know how I’ll come back from that._

Felix shakes his head. “I don’t care. I need training.”

Sylvain stares at him. “Right. Well, I thought it would have been a good opportunity for you to help me get my memories back—with some help from other friends.”

Felix feels guilt churning his insides, but he remains steadfast. “There are other opportunities. One missed lunch won’t kill you.”

“And it won’t kill you either.” Sylvain pushes his lip out in a small pout. “Come on. I thought you wanted to help me.”

Felix sighs. He knows his resolve is starting to tremble, starting to crumble as it always does when it comes to Sylvain, but he wants to remain stubborn. He doesn’t want to be forced into an awkward situation because he’s just a little soft for this idiot.

But if he just sucks it all up and lets Sylvain drag him around for a little while, Sylvain’s bound to stop talking about his training, right? And there’s always the bonus that he’ll get to be with Sylvain, watching him and keeping him out of any potential trouble with girls or any other form of danger.

Felix heaves another sigh. “Fine. But after that, I’m coming straight back here.”

Sylvain beams. “Great!”

It turns out that Sylvain’s ‘friends’ were just Dimitri, Dedue, and Ingrid. It’s a pleasant surprise to say at the least, considering that Felix was expecting to see a couple of girls. Sylvain gestures at the table, and Felix takes a seat.

“It’s great to see you again, Felix,” Dimitri greets, taking the seat in front of him. Dedue sits beside him, silent but wearing a relaxed expression. “This war has been hectic and very draining on all of us, but it’s nice to spend some time with friends.”

“His Highness has been working himself half to death planning for our next move in the war with the professor,” Ingrid adds, taking a seat. She smiles too. “I will agree though. It _is_ rather nice to have us all back together here.”

Sylvain pulls out the chair beside Felix and plops down in it. Felix feels his stomach churn, having Sylvain sit so close to him. “Told you I could bring him,” Sylvain says to Ingrid with a wink. “You can leave any of your troubles up to me. I can take care of them.”

Ingrid only rolls her eyes. “Okay. Good work, Sylvain.”

Lunch is surprisingly pleasant. Felix and Dedue don’t particularly say much, but with how much Sylvain is chatting and how much Ingrid and Dimitri are eager to interact, they don’t seem to need to. It’s relaxing hearing his friends all chatting away like they once used to—now with the addition of Dedue.

Their conversation ranges quite greatly from classes at Garreg Mach before the fall to the food that they used to eat together and the food that Dedue used to eat when he was younger to even more serious matters like Sylvain’s amnesia—and eventually, their next battle. Yet, even with the heavier topics, the light-hearted mood doesn’t seem to fade, as if the company of friends helps to bear the load of anxiety and despair.

While Felix eats and half-listens to the conversation, a passing topic piques his curiosity.

“Hey, Sylvain, do you remember anything of Felix yet?” Ingrid asks, picking the meat clean from the bone of her drumstick. “I do recall that the professor asked that you two spend more time together to try and jog your memory, but you don’t seem any different.”

Sylvain considers this question, idly chewing as he tries to look thoughtful. “Well,” he says slowly, drawing out the word, and Felix hates how his heart jitters in anticipation. “Not really.”

“Not really,” Dimitri echoes. “Implying that you remember just a little?"

“I guess.”

“So what do you remember then?” Ingrid presses.

Sylvain hums. “I guess a little of what you guys have all been telling me.” His eyebrows furrow. “It’s a little hard telling if it’s a memory or if I’m just great at imagining things, but I feel like I remember a bit of our childhood.”

As if the whole table collectively released a relieved breath of air, the mood lightens up a little.

“That’s great, Sylvain,” Ingrid tells him happily. “It’s better than no progress at all.”

“At this rate, you may just regain your memory before the war ends,” Dedue muses.

“What exactly do you remember?” Felix prompts.

Sylvain smiles. “Got your interest?” He gives a small shrug. “I think that the one thing that stands out the most to me—something that doesn’t feel like my imagination—is how Ingrid and Dima were talking about your birthday earlier. Your sixth birthday, I think.”

Felix wonders why that’s the first thing Sylvain remembers of him, especially when Ingrid and Dimitri barely touched on the subject of that birthday party.

It was just another ordinary noble’s birthday party. Dimitri, Ingrid, and Sylvain all came over with their parents. It honestly felt like more of a social event for the parents, who all chatted at the dining room table over some tea and biscuits.

“I really vividly remember the decorations, the food, and the snowstorm,” Sylvain continues, and Felix remembers something a little embarrassing from that birthday party.

Dimitri, being the crown prince of a whole kingdom, and Ingrid, living relatively far away from the Fraldariuses, had headed out pretty early but Felix had begged Sylvain and the Gautiers to stay a little longer so that they could play together some more.

"I never see Sylvain,” six-year-old Felix had sobbed, hiccuping as he clung to Sylvain’s sleeve. Sylvain stood sheepishly before the adults, reaching a hand back to try and console Felix. “I wanna play with him! Please don’t go yet! Just ten more minutes?”

The Gautiers agreed to stay longer, but as the afternoon bled into evening, the Pegasus Moon winter became relentless. The snow, once a light coat of white along roofs and the grass, started to fall faster and harder until you couldn’t see even a few feet in front of you; the wind whipped up, and the clouds grew plump and dark, merging together.

Sylvain had ended up spending the night, and Felix had been embarrassingly ecstatic, claiming that he and Sylvain would stay up all night having fun only for both of them to fall asleep promptly at around eleven, just after sneaking into the kitchen for another helping of cake with Glenn and reenacting a knight’s tale that they had both enjoyed.

Felix thinks that he remembers this party for the same reason that Sylvain does.

Just before they had fallen asleep, Felix had told Sylvain with a warm smile, his eyelids starting to droop, “You’re my favorite person, ever. Even more than Glenn—but don’t tell him I said that,” which earned him a snicker from Sylvain.

“You’re my favorite person ever too,” Sylvain had echoed with happy eyes.

According to Glenn, who loved to tease Felix, they fell asleep, curled in towards one another under a pile of heavy winter blankets, holding hands. Felix had given him hell for that, though Glenn only ever laughed when Felix got his case for being a tease.

(A familiar but dull pang resonates through Felix’s chest at the memory of a clearly amused and delighted Glenn laughing at his embarrassment. He misses him, still. He wonders what Glenn would have made of his situation, what Glenn would make of Felix's feelings towards Sylvain.)

“You were a clingy kid,” Sylvain teases, and Felix sighs, his face heating up a little. “Kind of cute, especially considering how different you are now.”

“Forget I asked.”

Ingrid chuckles. “I hope you remember more of Felix as a kid,” she says with a small smile. “He was very cute. He cried a lot.”

“Ingrid.” Felix gives her a look.

“Oh, yes,” Dimitri adds on, chuckling. “He’d cry at the drop of a hat! You and Glenn were often the ones he sought out to console him.” Dimitri turns to Dedue and smiles at him. Dedue tries to hide the amused smile on his face.

"Is that true?” Sylvain looks over at Felix with a grin. “I mean, from what I remember of you as a kid, I’d believe it.”

“Shut it.” Felix shoots him a glare, and Sylvain only laughs.

 _There’s probably some kind of importance to that memory,_ Felix wants to believe. _Why else would he remember it? He’s been to so many of my birthdays that it shouldn’t matter. So maybe if I can remind him of memories that he thinks are important…_

Interestingly enough, at some point in the meal, Sylvain gives Ingrid and Dedue a look. He tries to be subtle, but Felix knows Sylvain’s faces better than he should. He knows Sylvain’s plotting something.

“I think I’m going to go ask our lovely professor a question,” Sylvain says, pushing his chair back and picking up his plate. “You guys are free to stay for as long as you want.”

“And Annette, um, asked me to help her in the greenhouse,” Ingrid hurriedly tacks on, picking up her own plate.

“I am also needed in the greenhouse,” Dedue says. "Pardon me."

Dimitri and Felix watch as their friends quickly leave them at the table alone together. An awkward and silent pause grows between them, growing more and more unbearable by the second until Dimitri finally breaks the silence.

Dimitri blinks owlishly, his expression as wide and earnest as it once was back in the academy days. It must have really taken him by surprise. “Um,” he says. He clears his throat and idly looks around, as if to find his friends. “That was rather… Abrupt.”

Felix isn’t sure what’s going on, but he has a feeling that Sylvain had planned this all beforehand. He had been painfully persistent when asking Felix to come out, after all.

The only question is: Why would Sylvain want to isolate Felix and Dimitri? Had someone told him about the tension between them? Felix doesn't have a good feeling about this.

Felix pulls his lips into a frown. “I’m leaving.”

“Oh, um, well I guess it’d be best if I left too. I am quite busy, but this was still a pleasant experience nonetheless, don’t you think?”

Felix gives him a flat look and leaves.

-

Sylvain watches as Felix leaves the table and frowns to himself. He quickly abandons his hiding spot and takes up a spot on a bench in the courtyard. He watches as Felix leaves the dining hall, looking around as if to see anyone, but after a while, he turns and makes his way in the direction of the training hall.

Sylvain couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but it was brief and awkward. Felix looked tense, and Dimitri looked plain confused. So his plan didn’t work.

Sylvain’s mind is already spitting out new ideas to try and get Felix to admit his love for Dimitri, like Ingrid had implied that one time during mealtime—right before Felix got embarrassed and tried to stop her from saying Dimitri’s name. Once Felix and Dimitri fall in love properly, perhaps Felix will loosen up with those lovey-dovey feelings of a new relationship and not train himself to death. He’ll realize that there’s more to life than fighting until death—that there’s love to be experienced, that there’s so much more to enjoy outside of being strong, that there’s strength in being soft sometimes. And once Felix is less focused on training, maybe he’ll be willing to open up more with Sylvain.

(But oddly enough, Sylvain’s plan only makes his chest feel _weird_. He isn’t sure how to describe what he’s feeling or why, but he feels _weird_. Hopefully, it’s just a passing feeling of uncertainty or something like that.)

Sylvain starts to plan another way to get Felix and Dimitri alone.

He manages to get Felix and Dimitri alone during mealtime again, asking Dedue and Ingrid to help him with his plan again. But immediately after, Felix tracks him down.

“You. Explain.”

Sylvain cocks his head. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve planned this out. Why are you leaving me with the boar?”

Sylvain rubs the back of his neck. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was just trying to go and find Mercedes because I had a question about some medicine she gave me.”

Felix fixes him a flat look.

“Really!”

“I don’t believe you.” Felix crosses his arms. “Did Ingrid ask you to try and get me to talk to the boar?”

“Nah, it’s nothing like that.”

"Then?”

“Then nothing. It’s just a coincidence.” Sylvain smiles at him, but Felix’s look remains unfazed, unimpressed, unconvinced. “You don’t believe me, still?”

“I wouldn’t believe you even if you handed me enough gold to commission a sword from Zoltan himself.” Felix plants a fist on his hip. “So talk. What are you trying to do?”

Sylvain whistles. "That's a lot of disbelief, huh?" When Felix's stern look remains unfazed, Sylvain idles, letting his gaze drift over Felix’s face and his demanding posture. Felix raises an eyebrow, and Sylvain finally admits, “I’m just trying to help.”

“By getting me to talk to the boar? I don’t care about him.”

Sylvain chuckles, both at the odd name Felix gave Dimitri and at Felix’s refusal to admit his love for the prince. “You don’t need to put up a front, Felix,” Sylvain teases. “Dimitri can’t hear you here.”

Felix stares at him. “You better not be implying what I think you’re implying.”

“Listen, Felix, there’s not much to lose by shooting your shot, you know? If you just ask him on just one date—”

Felix cuts him with a loud sigh. “No. Absolutely not. You _have_ to be one of the biggest idiots I’ve ever met in my entire life, if not _the_ biggest idiot.” He rubs his temples, mutters something under his breath, and continues with, “I am _not_ in love with the boar prince.”

Sylvain blinks. Is this a front too? Felix looks almost genuinely disgusted by what Sylvain’s saying so Sylvain’s quite convinced that he’s being serious—yet… “But Ingrid—”

“What about her? She knows I don’t like him. Whatever she told you was a lie.” Felix lets out another sigh. “What do you even get out of this? Why are you interested in my love life?”

“Well, I was thinking that if you got yourself a boyfriend, you wouldn’t want to train all the time.” Sylvain waits a beat. “It’s not healthy.”

Felix stares at him. “Sylvain,” he says slowly, as if explaining the most obvious thing in the world to Sylvain, “if I had a significant other, I would want to train more. So I could keep them safe.”

“Your significant other wouldn’t want that. They’d want you to spend time with them and trust them.” Felix considers this, looking at him in an oddly conflicted way. In the end, Felix just shakes his head and doesn’t say anything. “Who is that special someone anyway?” Sylvain prompts.

“I’m not telling you.” After a beat, Felix corrects, with a wince, “I don’t have one.”

Sylvain feels a smile starting to form at the somewhat contradictory sentences. “You’re not telling me who this special person is. But you don’t have one?”

(But oddly enough, Sylvain feels some sort of _lightheartedness_ , a kind of _hope_. He feels almost _happy_ that Felix isn’t into Dimitri. He quickly rationalizes it by saying that it’s because watching Dimitri, a close friend, date someone who is also supposed to be a close friend would be weird—and because it’d just make Sylvain’s flirting efforts a little more pathetic, since he hasn’t gotten to meet anyone who _truly_ loves him despite all the people he’s met. That kind of hurts to think about.)

Felix shakes his head. “Forget it.”

Sylvain laughs. “Come on! You can trust me!”

“After what you’ve been trying with me and Dimitri, I don’t think I can.” Felix turns briskly. “I’m going to train.”

“Felix!” Sylvain whines, but he smiles as he trails after Felix.


	7. maybe in another life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that I should probably be updating my other fics, but I'm kind of in one hell of a writer's block right now and this is the only one I can bring myself to update... This is the best I could really do ^^;; Hopefully it still makes sense and stuff!
> 
> Thank you for your understanding! Hope you enjoy!

It’s a new day, a new battle. The Blue Lions are marching out to where bandits and beasts alike have been spotted, where help has been desperately requested by village soldiers. It’s just another battle, but an air of unease surrounds Felix.

It’s because Sylvain is with them.

For the first time since Felix and Sylvain have recovered from their injuries, Byleth has decided to deploy them in battle. Felix isn’t opposed to fighting; his body is feeling better, and his skills are only going to grow rusty without real opponents. It’s just that he’s opposed to Sylvain coming along.

Felix has a bad feeling about Sylvain coming along to this mission. He has a terrible feeling, brewing from the deepest depths of his body. He’s seen Sylvain train, and he’s trained with him. He’s seen firsthand how strong of a fighter Sylvain is, even without his memories—but anxiety still twists and coils up his insides, leaving him tense.

Sylvain’s voice pulls him from his thoughts. “It feels great being away from the monastery.” Sylvain, atop his horse, stretches his arms out above his head. “Don’t get me wrong—it’s nice there—but I was starting to feel a little like a caged animal. Same sights every day.”

Felix gives a grunt in reply.

Sylvain peers down at him. “Hey, are you okay?”

“Yes.”

Sylvain gives him a flat look, but he doesn’t push it further. “You know,” he says nonchalantly, changing the subject, “the other night, I had a thought. But it kind of felt like a memory.”

Felix’s interest piques. He looks up at Sylvain. “Well? What was it?”

Sylvain grins. “Ingrid, Dimitri, Glenn, and I were playing in the snow, out in some kind of forest nearby—and you were there too.” He hums. “I’ve had this memory before, but you weren’t always there.”

 _It’s just a snow day. What’s so important about that?_ Felix ponders. _Why remember this day, out of all the other days?_

“So we were playing hide-and-seek or something, and Ingrid was counting. You were following me around, saying you wanted to hide with me because Glenn said he wanted to be alone—y’know, so he wouldn’t get caught.” Sylvain chuckles.

Felix sighs, embarrassment creeping onto his face as a slight flush. He can’t really remember this day. There have been too many days similar to this, unfortunately.

“And so I said, ‘let’s go hide in this cave I found.’ But there was this massive snowstorm, out of nowhere. We got lost in the snow for a bit, and then when we found the cave, we got snowed in.”

 _Oh, that day?_ Felix thinks. _I remember this now._

“Oh!” Ingrid chimes in from behind them, on her pegasus. “I remember that day!” She smiles. “Glenn freaked out so much because we couldn’t find you two for almost two hours.” She gives Sylvain a flat look. “That was entirely your fault.”

Sylvain laughs. “Yeah, but it was a good hiding spot, wasn’t it? You couldn’t find us.”

Dimitri chuckles. “Ah. I remember that day too. It was truly concerning.”

“And you went out of bounds. Of _course_ we couldn’t find you!”

As his friends bicker about their childhood play date, Felix reminisces himself.

 _How much of that day do you remember?_ Felix wants to ask. _Do you remember how you held my hand as you led me through the forest? Do you remember how we tried to start a fire with our rudimentary magic skills? Do you remember how much trouble we got in when they all found us?_

Felix winces. _Do you remember_ how _they found us? Trembling with stiff, cold fingers and toes, curled in towards each other? Sharing your fluffy coat, on the rough, ragged, rocky ground of the cave? Do you remember how we thought we were going to die and how you told me that you were happy that it was_ me _you were dying beside?_

Felix remembers that day, clear as day now. He was scared and cold and sad that he would never get to see Glenn again or eat his favorite pickled rabbit skewers again—but he was happy that Sylvain was with him. They told each other little stories to try and pass the time, even though it grew harder and harder to enunciate words as the biting chill slowly ate at them. Before he fell unconscious, he remembers his last thought echoing what Sylvain had told him— _I’m happy I’m with you in the end._

“Felix?” Sylvain prods at him with the dull end of his lance. “Hey, Felix.”

Felix shakes his head, like he can shake away the thoughts. He looks up at Sylvain. “I remember that day.” He grimaces. “I had a cold for a week after that.”

Sylvain’s eyes glint with amusement. “Hey, so did I! I lent you my coat!”

“I suppose you were in a worse situation.” Felix shrugs. “But Ingrid’s right. That was all your fault.”

“Geez, not you too.” Sylvain gives an exaggerated sigh, but he smiles nonetheless. “I get it, okay? I should have just climbed in a tree or something.”

“Or did what Glenn tried.” Dimitri laughs fondly at the memory. “He tried to blend in with the ground by burying himself in the snow.”

“And you copied him!” Ingrid chuckles, but even now, yearning and sadness are visible in her eyes. A terrible mixture of sadness and fondness and _pain_.

Felix knows that look. He’s worn it himself, throughout a majority of his life, in moments when none could see him.

Felix doesn’t want to think about Glenn anymore.

When they finally reach the place where the bandits and beasts are terrorizing civilians, Byleth, as bright and swift as ever, designs a strategy. Felix doesn’t listen to the rest of the instructions, only waiting for his instructions.

But he’s less than pleased to hear that Sylvain’s to be on the other side of the field, headed straight for one of the beasts while Felix picks off a few bandits. He doesn’t get the chance to oppose Byleth’s instructions because everyone is already taking off to defend the people.

Felix flicks a gaze to where he’s supposed to be going. Dimitri and Dedue are cutting a path through the bandits with ease. Then he looks where Sylvain is, charging head-first into a beast that is snarling and biting at the air and clawing at the people around it.

His first instinct is to tense up, to feel concerned. That idiot is fighting off all those bandits and that beast at the same time? Didn’t Byleth assign someone to look out for him? After a burst of powerful wind magic, probably from Annette, blows a few of the bandits trailing after Sylvain off their feet, Felix feels a little more assured.

 _Whatever. He’s probably fine if he’s got Annette and maybe Ashe working from a distance to protect him._ Felix starts to make his way towards Dimitri and Dedue. But suddenly, like a sudden strike of lightning, a vision jolts through his head.

He sees Sylvain calling out to him, trying to cover him from a distance with his javelin. He sees himself, struck with an arrow, stumbling back before he collapses. He sees Sylvain lying on the ground, weakly grasping at an arrow through his chest.

Just as suddenly as the images flashed through his head, they’re gone, leaving him cold.

 _Forget the plan. Dedue and Dimitri can take care of the bandits over there,_ he thinks as he runs to catch up with Sylvain.

Felix takes down a few bandits with a simple slash, a perfectly-timed parry, a strong strike. He weaves his way around the fallen bandits and covers Sylvain’s back. Sylvain doesn’t seem to notice until Felix fires a round of Thoron through a bandit that was coming up behind him.

Sylvain does a double take, following the trail of smoke and lingering sparks in the air back to Felix. “Felix? What are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to be over there.” Sylvain shifts his horse a little to face him. “The professor said—”

“I don’t care what she said. You’re being reckless, you sloppy bastard. You left yourself open to attacks from behind.”

 _Are you really going to let yourself get killed here? Are you really planning on killing us both here, in the middle of this stupid field?_ Felix wants to say. _I’m not dying here—and you aren’t either._

The words are on the tip of his tongue, but he stops himself just before he manages to make a sound, leaving Sylvain cocking his head in confusion at him. Sylvain probably doesn’t remember the promise. What’s the point of chastising him over it?

Felix just barely hears a bandit running towards him while he struggles to think of something to say. Felix quickly turns to kill him, but Sylvain strikes the bandit with his lance.

“Practice what you preach, Felix.” Sylvain smiles, though it’s brief and touched with a hint of grimness. “Well, if you’re here to watch my back, then go ahead. I’ll look out for you too.”

With the two of them together, fighting side-by-side and back-to-back, they are unstoppable. Felix feels a rush of confidence run through him as he and Sylvain take down bandits and confront the beasts terrorizing the villagers.

By the end of the battle, Byleth is surprised to see that Felix is with Sylvain, but she doesn’t seem to make much of it.

The victorious march back to Garreg Mach has the rest of the Blue Lions excited that they’d survived another fight—another day in the years-long war. Mercedes tends to wounds as they make their way home; Annette revels in her strengths— _did you see me, Mercie? I was a whirlwind of_ boom! _and_ pow! Ingrid and Ashe are caught up in a conversation about the menu at the monastery, seemingly excited for a nice, hot meal after a hard day of battle. 

Even Dimitri and Dedue seem to be in good spirits, though Felix can still sense the sickening, underlying tension surrounding Dimitri, his bloodlust from the battle tapering away for the night.

“Thanks for watching my back,” Sylvain muses aloud. Sylvain reaches and pets the horse along the neck, earning himself an affectionate snort. “I’m sure I had it handled, but hey, who am I to turn down a helping hand?” He flicks Felix a small grin.

It’s unabashedly provocative, a prod to try and get Felix to talk to him. Felix knows this. He takes the bait anyway.

Felix gives him a flat look. “Had it handled? Please. Your training is lacking, and if you think that you would have fared without my help, your intelligence is lacking even more so.”

Sylvain laughs. “Ouch. Ease up, Felix. It’s a joke.” Unfazed, Sylvain continues, “Anyways, I had this thought while we were on the battlefield. Er, memory? Not entirely sure. Care to give me some insight?”

Felix raises an eyebrow. “Daydreaming? No wonder you were being so careless. That could have gotten you killed.”

Sylvain shrugs. “Hey, daydreaming beats fighting any day.”

"Keep thinking like that and you’re going to be daydreaming _permanently_.” Felix grimaces. He sees Sylvain lying on the ground, wheezing and coughing and bleeding out from that arrow to the chest again, a haunting image that makes him go cold. What kind of terrible, morbid thought is this?

Felix doesn’t want to live in a life where Sylvain has to die like that.

Sylvain chuckles. “I know, I know. You don’t need to tell me to train harder. I get it.” He pauses shortly, waiting for Felix’s tension to ebb away before asking, “So? Do you wanna hear it?”

“What? Your daydream? Absolutely not.” Felix can only imagine Sylvain blathering on and on about some pretty village girls he spotted. A pang of something bitter runs through his veins.

“But what if it’s not a daydream? What if it’s a memory? Wouldn’t you want to make sure it’s something real?” Sylvain gives him an innocent look. “I thought you wanted to help me?”

Felix sighs. “Fine. But don’t be so insufferable next time. Just tell me you want to talk about your memory. I _know_ you can’t possibly be so incompetent that you can’t tell dreams and memories.”

Sylvain’s eagerness to share things he remembers about Felix makes Felix feel a little warm and bubbly, but as per usual, he doesn’t express it. Sylvain doesn’t seem at all bothered by what he said, giving a brief nod and perking up.

Sylvain doesn’t waste a breath, a second, a single thought. “Okay, so it came to me, right when you ran up behind me at the field.” He scrunches his brows together in thought. “It’s a little hazy, but I remember it was spring. Summer? It was warm.

“We were sitting out in my hiding spot—I think it was a place you could only get to if you crawled through this little opening in the garden wall. I don’t remember what we were really doing, but you started crying about something. A scar? A bruise? Something like that.

“I think you said you were worried that I was going to get myself killed.” Sylvain chuckles. “I think you knew it was because of…” He trails off, and a dark look temporarily takes over his expression.

 _Miklan,_ Felix fills in. _You were bruised and bleeding because of Miklan, and you thought you could hide it from me._

Sylvain shakes his head. “So you were telling me that you didn’t want me to die because then you’d be alone.” He smiles wryly. “You had Glenn, Dimitri, and Ingrid, you know.”

 _But I didn’t want them. I didn’t like them like I liked you._ Felix averts his gaze.

“So we made this promise, I think. Something like…” Sylvain pauses. “Well, I can’t really remember what we said verbatim, but I got the general gist of it.”

“We promised to stick together until we died together,” Felix finds himself saying.

Sylvain nods. “That’s it!” He chuckles. “Really idealistic, if you ask me. Something that only stupid, naïve kids can think of.”

Those words strike Felix hard. Sylvain seems to have remembered their promise—the thing that’s kept them both alive for years and years, through abuse and loss and war—but why doesn’t he take it more seriously?

“Idealistic to _you_ maybe,” Felix spits. He can’t stop himself. “What, would it kill you to trust in something—in _anything_? You and your _stupid, jaded pessimism_.”

“Felix?” Sylvain asks, surprise coloring his voice.

Felix silently storms forward. He doesn’t want to talk with Sylvain, not after that dismissive, almost chiding remark. Without that promise, Felix’s life seems so much bleaker, so much less cohesive—like the glue holding him together for around two decades is finally melting away.

They’ve reached Garreg Mach anyway.

-

A day passes without seeing Sylvain. And then another.

Felix sticks to his routine. He heads to catch a light breakfast before locking himself in the training grounds for hours, practicing his swordsmanship and his magic. Then he might take a break—wander around the monastery, grab some lunch, get stopped by Byleth who might want a quick briefing on a certain spell or a technique—before returning to the training grounds. He’ll eat dinner with his friends and head to his room.

He pointedly avoids Sylvain. Just thinking about him—and thinking about what he had said about their promise and how he had basically dismissed it, dismissed _Felix_ —just infuriates him and hurts him. If he sees Sylvain trying to catch his gaze from across the table during dinner, he’ll ignore him. If he sees Sylvain making his way into the training grounds, he’ll force himself to take a break, pushing past him and hurrying to his room.

How can Sylvain imply that their promise, one of the only good things from both of their ruined childhoods, stupid? Naïve? Unrealistic? How can he just say that and expect Felix to agree when before the war began, they had discussed it?

 _Do you remember the promise we made when we were kids?_ Sylvain had asked. _About sticking together until we die together?_ _Well, I’m really not trying to get myself killed before you. You know that, right?_

Felix remembers how he stared at Sylvain, wrapped in bandages in the infirmary. His defensive walls had crumbled, leaving him feeling strangely soft. He had even admitted to wanting to hug Sylvain that day. It was embarrassing, but he had been so happy—happy that Sylvain remembered that promise, that Sylvain wanted to stay with him until their deaths, that Sylvain was promising to be more attentive during training to keep himself safe.

And here Sylvain is now, acting like none of that happened.

Well, Felix supposes that because of the memory loss, it won't seem like it ever actually happened to Sylvain. But it’s still infuriating.

When the third, Sylvain-less day rolls around, Felix gets a knock at his door around the evening after dinner. Already knowing who it is, Felix sighs and forces himself to answer the door.

As he expected, Sylvain stands there at his door, sheepishly looking at the ground. He jumps a little when the door opens, as if he wasn’t expecting Felix to answer. His eyes flit from the ground up to Felix’s face.

“What?” Felix deadpans.

“Hi, Felix. Have a minute?”

Felix gives Sylvain a brief once-over and props a hand up on his hip. “What do you want, Sylvain?”

Sylvain frowns. “Well, I wanted to apologize. You took that whole promise comment a lot harsher than I thought you would. I didn’t think it meant that much to you.”

Felix stares at him. “Apology accepted.” He moves to close the door, but Sylvain quickly moves to stop the door from shutting.

“Whoa. Wait just a second.”

“What?” Felix crosses his arms.

“You’re just going to… _What?_ ” Sylvain furrows his brows. “But you’ve been angry at me since we got back to the monastery!” He waits for Felix to say something, but when he doesn’t, he continues, “Don’t just accept my apology if you don’t mean it, Felix.”

“Then don’t apologize for something you don’t know the full scope of.”

Sylvain’s eyes widen a little.

“Do you know why I’m so mad about it?”

Sylvain hesitates. His gaze drops to the ground briefly. “Well, based on what you said, I don’t believe in the promise and I’m stupid, jaded, and pessimistic.”

Felix waits.

Sylvain shifts uncomfortably. “And that upset you.”

“That’s not really it.” Felix pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. “That promise was important. To you and me both.”

“Both of us?” Sylvain furrows his brows. Felix can practically see the thoughts rolling around in his head. “But it’s just something we said as kids.”

“So?” Felix feels his temper starting to flare up, but he manages to reign it in. “We may have been kids, but we meant every word of it.” When Sylvain gawks, Felix frowns at him. “How sincere could your apology be if you’re still insisting that this promise means nothing to you?” He takes a small step backwards and tightens his grip on the door.

Sylvain senses that he’s about to shut the door and quickly wedges his boot in against the door. “Well, can you tell me what the promise meant to you? Maybe it’ll help me understand why it’s so important to both of us.”

Felix flinches. That promise means the world to him. It means belonging. Trust. Life. It means love. These are things that he can’t possibly say to Sylvain. He knows how Sylvain would react. He knows how Sylvain would give him that painfully sympathetic, pitying look. He knows what Sylvain will say. And his heart can’t handle that.

“What do you remember?” Felix prompts, even though his instincts are yelling at him to shove Sylvain away and slam the door on him. _I’m open_ , his thoughts are screaming. _I’m too open._

Sylvain hums. “I only remember the few things that I’ve told you. I know that we used to hang out a lot as kids—with Ingrid, Glenn, and Dimitri—but not much else.” He pauses. “Actually, I remembered something the other night. Before the war started, I remember you helping me patch up a little scratch I got.”

_It had been a regular night at Garreg Mach, and Felix was coming back from a late training session when he found Sylvain fumbling with his dorm room key, trying to get into his room._

_He had turned and seen Felix, smiling sheepishly. “Oh! Hey, Fe.”_

_Felix started to turn towards his own room when his eyes caught a glint of red along Sylvain’s cheek. He took a small step closer, as if to check if his eyes were playing a trick on him. He blinked. The red didn’t seem to disappear, and Felix quickly made his way to Sylvain, who had just unlocked his door and was trying to escape from his keen eyes._

_He grabbed Sylvain’s wrist. "What did you do?”_

_Sylvain sighed and turned to face him. His cheek was blotchy and red, and there was a sharp cut on his face. “Just another bad break-up,” he says nonchalantly, trying to pull his arm from Felix’s grip. Felix didn’t relent. “I’ll be fine, Felix.”_

_"Idiot. Go see a healer.”_

_"What for? It’s late, and I don’t think a little scratch like this needs much medical attention.” Sylvain finally pulled his arm from Felix’s grip and smiled at him. “You can go. I can take care of it myself.”_

_"Shut up.” Felix shoved his way into Sylvain’s room and sighed. “I don’t trust you to take care of yourself.” Sylvain stared at him, surprised. “Shut the door and get over here already.”_

_That night, Felix had patched up the cut along Sylvain’s cheek, left when the angered girl’s sharp nails got caught against his skin, and they had spent some time together. It wasn’t anything fancy, just two friends chatting together as the moon slowly shifted positions in the sky, but Felix enjoyed it, knowing that Sylvain was happy and safe; and Sylvain seemed to enjoy having company._

_Eventually, Dimitri knocked on their shared wall and insisted that they should get some rest for class the next day. Felix slipped out of Sylvain’s room and tried to get some sleep, despite how warm he felt and how incomplete he felt without Sylvain there with him, lighting up the room with his bright laughter and smiles._

“It really wasn’t a big deal,” Sylvain reminisces with a small smile, “but I appreciated it nonetheless. But what does that have to do with that promise?”

Felix lets out a sigh. “I’ll make this simple for you: we were very close friends. Our lives sucked. We found solace in each other.”

"Solace,” Sylvain repeats. “I can kind of understand why it’s so important, but… In the end, it’s just something sentimental, don’t you think? You don’t need to mold your life around something we said arbitrarily as kids.”

Felix seethes. “You think this is just about _sentimentality_? You think this is just something _arbitrary?_ You are the dumbest person I have ever met if you can’t get that it’s because I—” Felix catches himself right before _love you_ can escape his mouth. He can hear his heart beating in his ears.

“Because you what?” Sylvain prompts.

In that split second, as Sylvain waits for an answer, Felix weighs his options. He can play it safe, say something that wouldn’t jeopardize their friendship—or he can throw all caution to the wind and just spit out his feelings for Sylvain. Thoughts buzz around in his head; his anxiety spikes. His sanity wears thinner and thinner as his options and his worries and these consequences fly back-and-forth, up-and-down, to-and-fro.

And finally, under all the stress of his thoughts and all these weeks with an amnesiac who was once his best friend, _finally_ , Felix snaps.

“Because I love you,” he blurts, and it’s like the weight of the world is lifted from his chest. “That promise meant the world to me because it's always been a way for me to show that I love you and for me to protect you.”

Sylvain stares, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. He stares and flounders, gawks and gapes, trying to think of something to say.

But his silence says enough. The hesitation, the pure shock and conflict, the _silence_ —it all says what he cannot verbalize.

The full force of what he’s done finally, _finally_ sets in. He just confessed his love for Sylvain—a love stemming from their childhood together, over the span of years and years, through thick and thin. He just told this Sylvain, who still sees him as something akin to an acquaintance rather than the close friend that he once was, that he’s desperately in love with him and always has been.

Felix drags his hands down his face and buries his face in his arms.

 _I call him an idiot, but what the_ hell _did I just do? Goddess, I’m so fucking stupid._

 _Perhaps things wouldn't have been so bad,_ Felix thinks to himself as his emotions drag his heart into the darkest depths of his body, _in another time, in another life—one where Sylvain remembered me._


	8. realizations (about you, with you)

Sylvain stares at the wooden door, the slam of the door echoing in his ears as Felix’s words and his hurt face replaying in his head. His heart is strangely fluttering in his chest, but his body feels strangely numb. He can hardly process what he’s just heard, what he’s just seen.

 _Felix loves me?_ he thinks. _He_ loves _me?_

His first reaction is to think that Felix is playing a joke of some sort. How could anyone fall in love with someone who has such a terrible reputation when it comes to romance? He understands that they were best friends and that they’re brothers-in-arms now, fighting a war together, but he just can’t comprehend anyone loving him so genuinely, so _passionately_.

Yet, the more he thinks about it, the more it starts to make sense. He recalls every memory of Felix that he has, despite how few and far between they may be, and he can see small parts of this supposed love shining through.

Felix had had a strange reaction when he woke from that coma and learned about Sylvain. He was clearly distressed, crushed, hurt. He was in denial, insisting that Sylvain was playing some kind of sick joke and telling him— _begging_ him—to cut it out.

There was also that time when Ingrid mentioned that Felix was in love with a man—a man who is _not_ Dimitri, Felix clarified after Sylvain tried to set them up on a date. Sylvain realizes now that _Goddess, it’s me, it’s always been me_. The way that Felix was so hellbent on training and keeping “loved ones” safe, the way that he admitted that he had a “special someone” he wanted to protect, the way he looked so hurt when Sylvain explained how his special someone would want him to take care of himself.

And there are a few memories that are flashing into his head, memories he hasn’t had before—and even in these memories, Felix seems to show subtle signs of interest in him.

In one memory, he and Felix are spending time together at the monastery before the war went on, sitting together at the lake, their feet dangling in the cold water as they chatted idly, laughing and looking up to the night sky together. Just out of the corner of his eye, Felix would be giving him this strange look. In another memory, he and Felix are hanging out at the stables. Felix is giving him the same look as he feeds his horse. And in yet another memory, as he and Felix sit together just outside the cathedral, feeding the cats, Felix is giving him a soft, near dazed look. He is always wearing that damned, soft look, trying to quickly hide it when Sylvain looks over.

He also remembers this one thing, though he isn’t entirely sure if this is a hyper-realistic dream or a memory.

A dark room, with a cold, stone floor. A small spark of light. A short, pointy-eared woman with green hair. Her voice echoing through the room, she speaks to him, saying something undoubtedly important, but no matter how much he strains his ears, he can’t hear what she’s saying to him. Her lips move; his do too. He just can’t remember what was said, but he distinctly remembers the grief, the fear, the acceptance. Then, he wakes up in the infirmary, lying beside Felix’s sickly pale, eerily still body wrapped in bandages.

He shakes this strange thought away. He must be confusing a dream for reality. That kind of thought has no place in this situation right now, though it does pique his curiosity. He’ll come back to it later when his brain isn’t entirely focused on Felix.

Back to the situation at hand. Sylvain feels terrible about this all. Felix must be in so much pain; he must have been in so much pain after Sylvain lost his memories. But he isn’t sure that he feels the same way. He doesn’t think he loves Felix back the same way.

He doesn’t feel right leaving him here like this though.

Sylvain lifts a hand to timidly knock at the door, but he falters. This feels all too familiar, Sylvain standing at Felix’s room as Felix locks himself away and cries.

It _is_ familiar. Sylvain faintly remembers how Felix was never ashamed to cry until Glenn died, running into his arms as he sobbed about whatever trivial matter upset him. After Glenn died, Felix stopped coming to him and stopped crying in front of others, including him. No matter how tough things were or how upset he was, he wouldn’t cry in front of Sylvain anymore, instead storming off to the training hall or maybe his room.

It only took him a few times of witnessing this before he pieced together what Felix was doing. Felix would tough his struggles out in front of others, putting on an air of indifference or simple frustration; then, he would hide away in his room and cry, only in the presence in none.

Old habits die hard. Felix is still hiding in his room so he can suffer through his feelings alone.

Sylvain feels wrong leaving Felix like this, but he knows that Felix won’t answer him right now so he decides to step away.

The first step is the hardest. His eyes are glued to the door, as if he can see through the wood if he stares hard enough, as if he can will Felix to come out here by staring. But he manages to pry his gaze away from the door and take a step back. The rest of the steps, though difficult, follow in suit.

Sylvain leaves the dorms.

He isn’t sure of what he should do. His worries for Felix and his own conflicting thoughts still haunt him, still harass him.

 _Do I like Felix back? At all? No, I can’t possibly love him. Right? I mean, I hardly know the guy! He’s just a friend and just a guy who’s fighting in this war with me. But I_ guess _he’s kind of cute for a guy sometimes, like if we tease him about being a crybaby or if he tries to hide that he’s laughing at my joke. Oh, and whenever I manage to get Felix to smile a little, my heart feels funny and I feel kind of bitter in a way that Annette can draw a sincere smile from Felix just as easily as I can, and I don’t know how I got this far in life without knowing who Felix is, like my life just doesn’t feel right without him and—_

Sylvain shakes his head briskly, his eyes wide. His thoughts are a complete incomprehensible mess. _This is getting out of hand! I don’t love Felix! I just feel bad for him._ He outwardly sighs, wilting like a flower. _I should probably talk to someone about this, though. I’m sure someone’s bound to have insight on what to do about this._

-

Sylvain locates each of his friends around the monastery in search of help on what to do, but it seems like no one has any helpful advice on this.

“You’re asking for _my_ advice? On _love_?” Dimitri gawks at him, even as Sylvain tries to insist that it isn’t really advice for love— _I’m asking you to help me mend my friendship with Felix,_ he tries to tell Dimitri, but he won’t listen. “Well, I’m speechless. I don’t think that this is my area of… expertise.” His gaze takes on a sorrowful look. “I wish I could help, Sylvain, but um, well, I really don’t know what to say to you.”

“I thought you liked him back. Well, I guess your amnesia makes this complicated. Just talk to him.” Ingrid, blunt as ever, bites into her rabbit skewers. She waves the skewer at Sylvain, gesturing vaguely as she speaks. “Honestly, whenever you two get into any little spat, you come to me, and what do I say? ‘Just go and talk to him.’ And guess what? It works. Every time.”

“Felix _likes_ you?” Ashe blurts, his eyes wide. He grips the large book in his arms, pulling it tightly to his chest. His eyes then take on a little sparkle—the kind that tells Sylvain that Ashe is about to go on some wild tangent. Which he does. “That’s really interesting, actually! He kind of reminds me of this knight I read about and you’re _just_ like that knight’s lover! Okay, well, historians say it’s more like a _speculated_ lover, but they’re just ignoring the truth! I mean, look at the facts—”

“Felix is capable of romantic feelings?” Annette jokes, but after a semi-stern look from Mercedes, she settles down, though the sly smile doesn’t leave her face. “Well? What do you feel about him? Hmm? _No?!_ ” The smile starts to dim. She clears her throat. “Oh. Um, that’s a hard spot to be in, Sylvain. I’m really sorry.”

“How about you talk it out over some tea?” Mercedes advises. “In a nice, controlled setting with some nice, warm tea. And you can just tell him how you feel. You don’t have to stop being friends at all or anything, but you should both be comfortable around one another.”

Dedue’s advice is the most helpful by far, and it is simply, “I advise taking this matter to the Professor. She is very knowledgeable in many topics. She can help you, I’m sure.”

He makes his way to the Professor, where she is sitting out on the lake with a crudely-made fishing rod in her hands. Leaning back on one hand with the other gripping the rod, she senses his presence and looks up. She nods at him and he takes a seat beside her.

“Hi, Professor. I need some help.”

She sits up a little and faces him.

Sylvain sighs. “Felix told me that he’s in love with me.”

She is unperturbed in the slightest. It’s a great difference from his friends’ reactions—in fact, when he told Annette, she practically screamed with laughter and delight, and when he told Dimitri, he actually spat out the tea he was drinking, profusely apologizing for being so rude and getting it all over Sylvain’s clothes.

(Sylvain had struggled to keep his calm after Dimitri did that, desperately reaching for the tissues and insisting that he’s alright with a nonchalant smile as he wiped the tea and spit off his face and from his clothes. _Dimitri, you’re my friend and all, but if this stains my clothes…_ )

“But I… I don’t know.” Sylvain grimaces. He’s been lying to his friends, telling them outright that he doesn’t return Felix’s feelings. But he’s honest to the Professor. It’s easier this way. He gets more helpful advice and wastes less time. Plus, even if he did lie about it, the Professor would give him that _look_ she does when she knows that he’s lying. She always knows when he’s lying. Just like Felix seems to.

“You don’t know,” she echoes.

“I know he probably feels a lot of stuff for me starting from _way_ back in our childhood, but I don’t remember much about him. And I just don’t know how I feel about him.”

She hums. “Well, describe how you feel about him.”

Sylvain sighs. “Promise you won’t tell anyone, Professor?” He gives her his best pair of puppy dog eyes and sticks out his lower lip in a pout. “It’s _so_ embarrassing.”

She fixes him with a flat stare. “Sylvain. Your feelings. Describe them.”

Sylvain laughs. “Sorry, sorry. Needed to get a little joke in here. It’s just a little tense between us.” Byleth’s expression relaxes as Sylvain takes on a more serious air. “Well, I think he’s a really good fighter. Really dedicated. It’s sweet that he tries to take care of his friends, even when he’s being all grumpy and shy about it.” Sylvain snickers. “Oh, him being shy is so c—” His eyes widen. _Was I really about to say_ cute? His stomach curls with some kind of emotion. Something that feels suspiciously like embarrassment.

Byleth raises an eyebrow.

“Ah, forget it.” Sylvain looks out at the water, but he can tell that Byleth is staring at him so he sighs and tries to continue his thoughts. “He’s skilled. Smart. Kind. A little funny too.” He waits a beat. “Got a nice smile.” His face heats up a little. “His hair’s cool.” He shakes his head. “Professor,” he groans, resting his head in his hands, “I don’t get it. I don’t understand him. I don’t understand myself.” He gives her a pleading look. “Please, I don’t know what to do.”

A pitiful look settles on her face. “Well, what’s wrong about liking Felix back?”

Sylvain shakes his head immediately. “There’s nothing wrong with it!” He blinks. Why does he feel so defensive? He ignores it. “It just feels so weird. I mean, I feel like I barely know him.” He feels a childish scowl coming onto his face. “I just wish I had my memories back.”

Sylvain watches as the tip of the fishing rod dips and dances, and Byleth springs to her feet, pulling the rod. Sylvain sees a large shadow in the lake weaving through the water and slowly coming towards the dock, though it writhes and fights back. Byleth doesn’t relent, even if the string of the rod is so taut with tension that it looks like it’ll snap soon.

“Then get your memories back and make your decision.” Byleth pulls the fish onto the dock, and Sylvain jumps back as a large fish flops around on the dock. She looks up at him. “Just tell Felix that you need more time to think about this and be patient. Wait for your memories.”

Byleth picks up the fish and starts to leave, but Sylvain impulsively reaches out.

“Wait, Professor.”

She turns to look at him.

“Um, would you mind if I told you about this dream I had?”

She flicks her gaze at the fish and looks up at Sylvain. _I’m a little busy now,_ her face reads. Sylvain shoots the fish a small glare and before trying to plead with Byleth a little more.

“It won’t be long.”

She nods at him.

Sylvain quickly explains his dream of the pointy-eared, green-haired woman. There’s a strange look to her eyes as Sylvain mentions, “I can’t remember what she said, but I swear she mentioned you.”

At the end of Sylvain’s explanation, he feels a hint of shame lap at his heart. “It’s just a dream, of course,” he hurriedly tacks on, “but what would you take this to mean if it were real?”

“I am not a professional dream interpreter my any means,” Byleth tells him. She waits a beat. “But that description—that was the Goddess, Sothis, and she sought to spare you from death. She gave you a chance to start anew.” She pauses and averts her gaze. “Or, at least, that’s what I believe it means.” 

“But she mentioned you.” That Sylvain’s sure of. He couldn’t really hear what else Sothis said, but he distinctly remembers the confusion around why a ‘professor’ was mentioned.

Byleth doesn’t even blink as she replies, calmly, “So she did. Dreams are so very odd, aren’t they?” Byleth gives Sylvain a small nod and turns, heading up the stairs to the dining hall, to the kitchen, with her catch.

 _She knows something,_ Sylvain thinks. _She definitely knows something._ But his eyes drift from his professor’s silhouette in the dining hall to the dorms. His stomach twists with guilt. _But I’ll take her advice for now._

-

Dinner is awkward. Solely because Felix isn’t there. And he isn’t there for breakfast, lunch, or dinner the next day either. He’s not at the training grounds; he’s not at the lake. Sylvain can’t find Felix, but his dorm door is always locked. He has a pretty good idea of where Felix is and what he’s doing.

 _He’s avoiding me._ Sylvain lets out a small sigh as he passes Felix’s silent room on the way to his own. _I get it though._ Guilt sinks his heart like a stone. _Just wait, Felix. I’ll get my memories back. I’ll be normal again._

Sylvain won’t say that he doesn’t miss Felix. The monastery definitely felt a lot livelier and a lot more fun with Felix around, even if Felix just locked himself away in the training grounds to practice his swords and his reason magic. It gave Sylvain something to look forward to, someone to talk to, someone to share looks with at the war meetings. Now, his seat at the conference room and at the dining table is always empty; his training swords go untouched.

Sylvain tries his best to remember Felix, but he’s just frustrated. It’s like the first few weeks when he lost his memories. Felix was ignoring him or just being cold, and he was trying to remember Felix on his own. He wasn’t successful then. He isn’t successful now.

But he’s determined. He reads up on amnesia to see if there’s some sort of way to magically fix it, and he goes to his friends, asking them to help him.

His friends are more than happy to indulge him.

“What do I know of you and Felix?” Dimitri’s uncovered eye sparkles. “I like to think that I know quite a bit. I was there too, you know. You and Felix were always inseparable. You’d always hold hands and play together as kids. Inseparable as children; inseparable as adults too.” He chuckles. “Oh, you were always happy with one another, even if you argued about things.”

“You two didn’t argue all that much,” Ingrid jumps in, “but if you did, it was always over little things. You were both stubborn and competitive.” She pauses. “Things changed a little when you picked up that nasty flirting habit and when Glenn died—you guys had a lot of arguments then. But they were never too serious. You never held it against each other. You were still really close friends.”

“At the monastery, you would argue too,” Dedue adds, “though it was not very serious. Things like ‘button up your shirt, you’re showing too much skin’ and ‘stop training so hard and come eat dinner with us already.’” He smiles a little. “I believe Ashe compared it to an elderly couple bickering.”

Ashe laughs. “It’s true! You two bickered like a married couple, but you two always were with each other. I remember at our very first choir practice, you asked me to move over so Felix could sit with you.” He smiles. “And you said the same thing in class too.”

“It was honestly a little rude!” Annette puffs her cheeks out in a pout. “We wanted to spend time with Felix too, but whenever you weren’t with girls, you always stole him away so you could hang out together! He was weeding the monastery with me once, and you stopped by and literally complained when Felix said that he was busy. You sat there and just watched us weed the place!”

Mercedes shakes her head, giving Annette a small smile. “Now, now, Annie. You did the same to Sylvain when he was gardening with me too, you know.” She looks at Sylvain, that same smile growing a touch more sympathetic. “You two would help each other would in class too, you know! Why, I remember when Felix forgot his textbook and you gave him yours! You had to stay after class for detention because you forgot your book, but I do believe the Professor let you out early.”

Even Professor Byleth has things to add.

She nods at what Mercedes said. “I knew it wasn’t Felix’s book. His is a lot messier.” She gives Sylvain a flat look. “I appreciated the effort, though.” She shakes her head. “You two were certainly something else, always slipping each other notes in class. And when I confiscated them, I had no idea what to make of them.” She smiles the tiniest bit. “But I do remember you once drew Felix as a small, black cat and he got angry at you. He threw the note at you, and that’s how I caught you two.”

“Ah! I remember that too. Detention for disrupting the class,” Dimitri recalls with a small laugh. “Felix was not happy with that verdict.”

“Honestly, he had it coming. What was he thinking, passing notes in class?” Ingrid huffs. “Was that even worth it?”

“Um, _yeah!”_ Annette smiles. “What fun’s class without a little bit of mischief?” She looks over at Byleth. “No offense, Professor.” Byleth just shakes her head.

“I agree! They had their fun!” Mercedes giggles.

It’s a fun time, warmth and happy laughter filling the air to distract them from the war blazing the world to the ground just outside. Memories of Felix and Sylvain fly around the dining hall table, and it eventually just becomes a nice recollection of all the Blue Lions’ times at the monastery. Sylvain doesn’t mind. He likes seeing his friends happy, and he’s already having memories slowly, slowly, _oh so slowly,_ drift back to him as his friends describe moments like this.

But it’s just not the same without Felix. It feels sad. It feels empty and weird and _sad_. It’s not like they’re reminiscing on the happy memories of a dead man, but without him here, it certainly feels that way.

Even so, Sylvain’s memories steadily come home, come to him. Some are still a little fuzzy, and he’s certainly still bearing gaps in his memory, but he’s feeling a lot more like himself. It’s like Felix, once hidden by shadows and blurs in his memories, is stepping into the light, stepping into Sylvain’s life again. He even remembers that promise that they made, the one that has kept Sylvain alive for all these years and is going to keep him alive for many, many more—because he’d be damned before he let anything come to harm Felix.

And oddly enough, with these memories comes feelings. Confusing, dizzying, frustrating feelings. They leave him breathless and flustered and _yearning_ ; they leave him wanting Felix by his side, wanting Felix’s voice saying his name and scolding him for being stupid or careless or annoying, wanting Felix’s lips on his own. The more he thinks about Felix, the more he remembers; and the more he remembers about Felix, the stronger these confusing, embarrassing feelings for Felix get.

 _Have I always been like this?_ Sylvain wonders one night, staring up at the ceiling of his bedroom. _Have I always been so damn obvious? And so oblivious?_ He rolls over in his bed. _These feelings—they’re undeniable. I definitely harbor some kind of romantic feelings for him. And I have for a while. Since I was little._ He rolls over onto his other side with a grimace. _Goddess, but how would he even react now? I can’t talk to him. He hates me._

He strains his ears, but it’s useless. It’s not like he can just hear Felix’s dorm room from here, especially considering that Dimitri’s room is right in-between them. But he so desperately wants to know how Felix is— _has he moved on? Is he okay? Is he still hurt, thinking that I don’t love him back?_

-

Sylvain ends up finding the professor. He has questions still, and she seems to have some answers. This time, she’s in the garden, kneeling on the ground and carefully planting seeds in the soft, damp soil.

“Sylvain.” She nods at him. “Come help me with these seeds.”

Sylvain obediently takes a knee beside his professor, but when she holds out her palms, where seedlings rested in her dirt-covered palms, Sylvain shakes his head. She shrugs and plants them in the ground herself.

“Professor, about that dream I told you about…”

She pauses; she freezes. Then, she tries to continue burying the seeds as if unaffected.

“What are you hiding from me?” He can’t help the way he sounds so suspicious, so untrusting. He sounds near hostile, like he’s interrogating her for committing a crime, but he’s so convinced that she _knows_ something.

“I am hiding nothing.” She wipes her hands down on her shirt. Sylvain cringes a little. “I interpreted your dream. It’s _your_ dream. You’re the one hiding things from yourself.”

Sylvain frowns. “But you seem to know so much about it.”

“I know nothing about your dream. All I know is what you’ve told me.” She pauses. “But if you are that adamant in pushing this topic, I will tell you what I know.”

Sylvain leans forward a little.

“The Goddess is able to save certain people, even if it seems that they’ve already died. She turns back the hands of time.”

"The hands of time—that’s what the Goddess said in my dream.”

Byleth nods. “You must have had a divine vision. When Mercedes got to your body at that battle, she told me that you died. Your heart stopped for twelve minutes. And started beating at the thirteenth minute.”

Sylvain stares.

“She must have chosen to spare you.”

“But why me?”

Byleth shrugs. “She works in mysterious ways.”

Sylvain sighs. “So if she chose to spare me, and I technically died, do you think this has to do with my memories?”

Byleth considers this. She eyes Sylvain up and down, once. Then, ever so hesitantly, she gives a small nod.

“But why my memories of Felix?” Sylvain furrows his brows and forks a frustrated hand through his hair. “Why him? Did she spare him too?”

“Perhaps you should ask her in prayer.” Byleth sighs and stands. “As for Felix—I believe that she spared him too. His heartbeat also seems to have stopped, only to return right as yours did.”

Sylvain snaps his fingers. “Then he must have had that dream too!”

“And what do you plan on doing with this information?” Byleth crosses her arms. “The Goddess has given you a chance to continue your life. Here you are, spending your time thinking about that vision when she has clearly intended for you to pursue your memories and pursue Felix.”

Sylvain raises an eyebrow.

“You have not made amends yet. I can tell.”

Sylvain frowns. “I haven’t. I don’t know what to say to him.”

Byleth’s expression relents. She pats Sylvain’s head, and Sylvain resists the urge to try and swipe away the dirt that was inevitably left behind at the contact. “You just need to be genuine with him. He won’t believe you at first, but you know him better than I. I’m sure you will know how to convince him.”

With that the professor leaves Sylvain dumbfounded in the garden.

-

That night, Sylvain can’t sleep. His confusion around the Goddess and his weird feelings about Felix swirl around his head and flit back and forth, leaving him restless. He tosses and turns and flips and flops until he decides that he can’t handle this anymore.

He goes out for a midnight walk. It’ll help to clear his mind and to tire him out for bed.

He walks around the monastery, walking past the training grounds and the courtyard and the long-abandoned classrooms. He climbs the bridge and finds himself wandering the cathedral. He steps in and looks at the ruins. As much as he and his fellow Faerghans have tried to fix the cathedral, it seems like the roof will remain caved in until there is more time to fix it.

He walks down the aisles, his eyes glued to the unique patterns of the floor and the mosaics, the tall pillars and the dome arching the ceiling above him.

Perhaps he should pray to the Goddess. He’s not a devout person by any means, but he does wonder why that divine vision wiped his memories of Felix.

Just as Sylvain sits at one of the pews—one of the pews that isn’t as damaged nor as dusty—he hears a soft noise. The pitter-patter of footsteps, far too little to be that of a human. From the moonlight peeking in through the dome in the roof, Sylvain sees a cat. The cat stares at him and meows before stalking off.

Now that he thinks of it, he hears more cats. The distinct but distant sound of purring, their meowing, and even the sound of a cat sloppily munching on some sort of food. Is someone here?

 _Did Ashe sneak out to feed the cats again?_ Sylvain thinks as he gets up off the pew and begins to follow the cat. _Probably not a smart thing to do during a war since we’re rationing our food… If Felix won’t tell him off, maybe I should._

Sylvain follows the cat out of the nave of the cathedral, abandoning the broken pews and the shattered mosaics and the scratched floor tiles. He exits, walking through the east wing of the cathedral. The sound of the cats grows louder, and he hears someone shuffle as he descends down the stairs as quietly as he can.

It’s not quiet enough.

“Who’s there?” demands a rough voice. A voice he could never forget, one he’s memorized by heart. He hears the telltale sound of Felix’s sword scraping against its sheath. “Who’s there?” he demands again, angrier, louder.

“It’s just me,” he blurts, stepping off the stairs into the little alcove where Felix is. At his feet, a crowd of cats lie on the ground. A few are eating something; another few are lazing about on their backs with fur clearly ruffled. A cat toy lies on the ground beside one cat, who is pawing at it curiously. Sylvain’s heart flutters with the realization that _Goddess, Felix was playing with the cats._

Felix stares at him. A flash of surprise graces his features, only to be quickly replaced with some kind of dark look. Something angry. Something hurt. Felix sheathes his sword, but tension still locks up his body, his shoulders squared. He starts to walk away, but Sylvain quickly stops him, running after him.

“Felix, wait.”

Felix swats Sylvain’s hand away, briskly, quickly. But he stays, giving Sylvain a flat look. “Whatever stupid shit you want to say to me, keep it to yourself. I don’t want to hear it.”

“I think you might want to.” Sylvain’s heartbeat is slowly getting quicker and quicker as he realizes what he’s about to do. “Um, so, when you confessed to me a few nights back, you didn’t give me a chance to reply.”

Felix gives a frustrated growl and starts to leave again, but Sylvain reaches out and grabs his wrist, not letting go even when Felix tries to pull away.

“Please hear me out, Felix.”

Felix sighs.

“I’m not here to ridicule you or anything, I promise.” Sylvain can hardly speak, can hardly breath. His heart has leapt up into his throat. His hands are growing sweaty, and his face is starting to heat up too. He lets go of Felix, worried his hands are going to be noticeably damp. “Well, like I said, you didn’t give me a chance to reply. At the time, I don’t think I would have said yes—” Felix averts his gaze, a bitter look to his eyes, “ _but_ I think I would now. In the past few days, I’ve had a few more memories come back. I’m still missing some, I’m sure, but I remember a lot more.

“I feel a lot more different now,” Sylvain continues. “I felt like too much of a blank slate when it came to you earlier. But now, I feel different. I… I actually like you. A lot more than I thought.”

Felix immediately tenses. “Don’t pity me,” he snarls. “I don’t want to hear this from you.” He steps back, looking like he’s just one wrong move from taking off and hiding himself away again.

“I’m not pitying you.” The response is immediate—and Sylvain means it with all of his heart. “I’m not saying this just to make you feel better. I’m not lying or pitying you or anything. I genuinely want to tell you that I like you.”

Felix scoffs. “Like I believe that.” But he makes no move to leave.

Sylvain frowns. “I know. It seems pretty unbelievable. This sudden change of heart seems completely unrealistic, right?” He averts his gaze. Looking at Felix, at the devastation and frustration on his face, at the disbelief and the hurt, directly would just hurt too much. “But I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve spent the past few days really just trying to remember as much as I can about you.”

There's a lull in their conversation, a pause in their world. Though the moon continues to glint and glimmer in the night sky, slowly making its way across the sky, everything around him and Felix seems to stop.

When Felix finally speaks, their world starts to turn again. “And what do you remember?” His tone is hushed, careful, curious.

Sylvain smiles a little. “Well, would it make you believe me anymore if I said that I remember our promise?” Felix’s raises an eyebrow, but the interest in his eyes doesn’t fade, doesn’t dim even a single shade. “I’m really sorry I brushed it off before. I genuinely didn’t remember how much it meant to either of us—especially considering that it’s really one of the things that's kept me alive until now. And it always, always, _always_ reminds me how much I really like you.”

Felix stares at him. Sylvain see that he’s thinking about something— _Goddess, every expression he makes, it’s all so familiar now,_ Sylvain’s brain cries out. _How could I have been so blind? How could I possibly have missed any of this?_ Oh, _how I’ve missed this, seeing him for who he_ really _is_ —but he can’t tell what conclusion Felix is coming to.

“Fe, I wouldn’t lie to you,” Sylvain pleads. “Believe me. I'm sorry I put you through all of this confusion and sadness, but I remember a lot more now. And what I remember the most is how much I really do love you back.” His face flushes a little at the admission, but he feels so free saying it. The sheer euphoria he gets from saying this, from speaking to Felix so genuinely—it’s enough to make him into a dirty sinner, addicted to singing his praises, his _love,_ to Felix and Felix alone. He can’t help saying it again. “I love you, Felix.”

Felix grimaces, but even in the dim midnight moonlight, Sylvain can see the way that Felix’s face becomes a touch redder, the way that he bites back a relieved look, the way his eyes look so earnest. There's something of a sheen to his eyes, like Felix's eyes are slowly welling with tears. It feels like a hundred years passes them by, Felix fighting with his thoughts and Sylvain waiting patiently for Felix’s answer.

“You’re right," Felix mutters. "This is unbelievable.”

Crestfallen, Sylvain’s hearts slowly begins to sink in his chest.

“But not entirely impossible.”

Sylvain lifts his head a little and finds Felix taking a small step closer. As if not to scare away a skittish kitten, Sylvain moves slowly, gently. He takes his own step forward and looks into Felix’s eyes, a small smile growing on his face. Felix doesn’t smile back, but his eyes do.

“I have my doubts,” Felix says quietly, “but… if you can answer me this question, I’ll believe you.”

“Ask away.”

Felix leans in a little more. His lips are but a hairsbreadth away from Sylvain’s, and Sylvain can feel his soft, warm breaths against his skin. Sylvain so desperately wants to push forward, to merge their lips, but he’s waiting for Felix’s question.

“Yes or no?” The whisper trails from Felix’s lips and rise into the air between them. 

It’s an ambiguous question. Yes or no to what, exactly? To anyone else, this means nothing. To anyone else, it’s just something cryptic and strange. 

But to Sylvain, it’s a genuine question—and it’s not just one question. It’s several bundled into one. _Do you really love me? Do you really, truly mean it? Do you really need me like I need you?_

But most importantly, Felix is asking, _Can I kiss you?_

And to all of these questions, Sylvain has the same answer— _yes, of course._

Sylvain doesn’t need to speak to let Felix know what his answer is. His lips against Felix’s are enough to convince him.

And though there’s no true guarantee that Sylvain will ever regain all of his memories, even if he spends the rest of his life chasing after the life he used to live, there’s still many things in life that are certain. Felix loves him. He loves Felix. And they’ll spend their lives at each other’s sides, cherishing one another and building new memories together to replace the any that Sylvain can’t remember.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a bit of an abrupt ending, but I think it wraps up kind of nicely here. I don't want to drag it out too much, after all.
> 
> So this is the end of _free fall away_! It's so weird to think that this is now a finished fic, but I'm happy to have written this!! Thank you all so very much for reading, and I hope you've enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!! :D


End file.
